Fourteen Afghan security guards were killed in a clash with US-led troops, a provincial governor said yesterday, but the military said they were suspected militants who fired first.

Three destroyed vehicles remaining at the scene after the fighting in the eastern province of Khost late Sunday were scorched and pocked with bullet holes, an AFP reporter said.

Khost governor Arsala Jamal said the men were security guards for a road construction company, rejecting suggestions from the US-led coalition that the men were anti-govemmentmilitants.

"None of them is alive to say how it happened... but I know they were not Taliban. They were security guards working for 250 dollars a month," Jamal told AFP.

Locals said they had seen men in the vehicles raise their arms in a surrender-like gesture before they were fired on.

The US Forces Afghanistan said its troops had stopped three suspicious-looking vehicles, and the occupants had climbed out and opened fire on them.

"There were three vehicles, they got out with weapons and started firing. We returned fire," Colonel Greg Julian told AFP, adding the men had been armed with rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

"The helicopter was an overwatch and when the suspects started firing, we fired back and the helicopter also fired on the vehicles," he said.

"Anybody that is going to fire on the coalition is not necessarily a friend of the Afghan government," headded.

The clash took place about 12 kilometres (seven miles) northeast of the provincial capital, also called Khost, and about two kilometres from an international military base.

The US military said it was looking into the incident with the Afghan interior ministry and fyad investigators on the scene.

After the troops returned fire, there were explosions in the vehicles, it said in a statement.

"Numerous ammunition belts and small-arms weapons were recovered from the vehicles," the statement said.

There are tens of thousands of international soldiers in Afghanistan to help the government fight an insurgency led by the Taliban, who were in government between 1996 and 2001.

There have been dozens of incidents in which they have been accused of killing Afghan security forces or civilians, sometimes by mistake or after false intelligence.

The foreign forces also say militants deliberately operate among civilians for their owm protection.

There was a similar incident late last month in which the US military said it had killed several insurgents in the province of Ghazni but local officials said the men were civilian security guards, 23,of whom were killed'., ,