Taliban fighters have ambushed a police chief's convoy in southern Afghanistan, killing four policeman, and a US soldier was killed in a separate incident.
The attacks were the latest in a wave of rebel violence since the end of a winter lull.
The police chief of Deshu district in Helmand province, Shadi Khan, said he survived yestedayday's attack near the Pakistani border but four of his men were killed. Two Taliban fighters were also killed in the clash, he said.
A Taliban spokesman, Abdul Latif Hakimi, confirmed the ambush but said no Taliban were killed. The two policemen captured in the fighting were executed, he said.
In a separate incident, a US patrol was ambushed in Uruzgan province and one soldier was killed, the US military said in a statement. There were no other casualties in the attack.
About 18,300 US-led forces, most of them Americans, are in Afghanistan battling militants and hunting for their leaders.
US-led forces toppled the Taliban government in late 2001. Taliban fighters have waged an insurgency since then, especially in the south and east, but they failed to disrupt a landmark October presidential election won by US-backed Hamid Karzai.
Taliban attacks tailed off during the winter, leading to speculation they might be running out of recruits and resources, but the violence has picked up again in recent weeks.
Rebels raided a district headquarters in neighbouring Kandahar province at the weekend, killing two policemen. Four guerrillas were killed.
A Romanian member of the US-led international force hunting militants was killed in a weekend blast in another part of Kandahar and two US soldiers and two government men were wounded in a weekend attack in Uruzgan province.