Taliban fighters killed two Afghan government soldiers today as the troops carried out a raid to destroy opium poppies in the south of the country, the provincial governor said.
President Hamid Karzai has vowed to wage war on a drugs trade that earned some $2.8 billion last year, equivalent to 60 percent of Afghanistan's gross domestic product.
Uruzgan governor Jan Mohammad Khan said two other government soldiers were wounded in the attack as some 600 troops from the fledgling Afghan National Army destroyed the newly planted poppies in the province's Deh Rawud district.
The troops later mounted a counter-attack and killed two Taliban fighters, he said.
Uruzgan, and Deh Rawud district in particular, has long been a hotbed of activity for Taliban guerrillas driven from power by US-led forces in late 2001.
Two US soldiers were killed by an improvised bomb in the district some 400 km (250 miles) southwest of the capital Kabul in late November and another two were killed there by a similar blast in October.
The Taliban has vowed to pursue a "jihad", or holy war, until foreign forces quit Afghanistan.
Production of opium from poppies has risen since the Taliban were toppled two years ago. Opium is the raw material for morphine and heroin and in 2004, Afghanistan accounted for 87 percent of the world's supply of heroin.