The Afghan government said yesterday that seven policemen were killed when militants stormed their post in the troubled south, while nearlythreedozen militants died in various clashes.

The attacks were part of a tide of extremist-linked violence that has gripped Afghanistan for years as insurgents try to bring down the government that replaced the hardline Taliban regime ousted in 2001.

The policemen were killed in an attack late Wednesday on their post near Lashkar Gah, capital of Helmand province, provincial government spokesman Daud Ahmadi told AFP.

"We lost seven police officers. Twootherswereinjured," hesaid.

Helmand, the main producer of Afghanistan's huge output of opium, is one of the provinces where the Taliban are most active

and control a handful of districts.

Authorities say about 800 members of the Afghan security forces, the bulk of them police, have lost their lives in insurgency-linked unrest since the start of the year.

More than 150 international soldiers have also died, mostly in attacks.

Afghan government officials also reported that three dozen Taliban had been killed in various clashes with security forces overnight, including in Helmand, neighbouring Kandahar and the western province of Badghis.

It is impossible to independently verify the tolls since the fighting mostly occurs in remote and dangerous areas.

Earlier hundreds of French troops have deployed to train and mentor Afghan security forces in a key southern province wracked by the Taliban-led insurgency, Nato said Thursday.

Meanwhile, eight Taliban mili-

tants were killed in the south Wednesday, authorities said.

The French troops traveled in 94 vehicles from Kandahar to Uruzgan province in what was one of the largest ground military convoys in southern Afghanistan in years, the military alliance said in a statement.

Nato did not provide the exact number of troops deployed, and officials would not specify whether they were being relocated from other areas in Afghanistan or were new to the country.

But France has about 1,500 troops in Afghanistan, and French President Nicolas Sarkozy has pledged to send 700 more soldiers by the end of the year to help Nato-led forces.

Meanwhile, Colombia may send soldiers to Afghanistan and attach them to Spanish forces already in the country, the head of the nation's armed forces said late Wednesday.