KANDAHAR, Nov 23: Taliban militants beheaded seven policemen after overrunning their checkpoints in southern Afghanistan on Friday, officials said. An Australian soldier and three civilians were also killed in a separate clash.

Six other police officers were missing after the Taliban attacked police checkpoints in Arghandab district, in Kandahar province, said Abdul Hakim Jan, a police officer.

The attack in the strategic area of Arghandab, 25 kilometres north of Kandahar city, came weeks after Afghan and foreign troops forced Taliban militants to relinquish control of the town, which they had briefly captured.

During Friday’s attack, the militants ambushed police checkpoints set up to keep the Taliban fighters away from the town and beheaded seven policemen, said Mullah Mohammad Nabi, a Taliban commander in the area.

In neighbouring Uruzgan province, an Australian soldier and three civilians were killed on Friday during an attack on Taliban bomb-makers in the provincial capital of Tirin Kot, Australia’s defence chief said.

It was Australia’s third combat death in the conflict, all in the past two months.Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston said Pvt. Luke Worsley, 26, was killed while participating in “a planned and deliberate attack by our forces against Taliban leaders and bomb-makers”.

After the clash, three civilians — two women and one child — were found dead in the militants’ compound, Nato’s International Security Assistance Force said.

It was not known how they died, a Nato statement said.

“However, we do know that the insurgents fired upon ISAF soldiers from the compound in which the Afghan civilians were found after the fight,” the statement said.

Separately, US-led coalition troops clashed with militants in central Afghanistan on Thursday, leaving several suspected insurgents dead and one coalition member wounded, the coalition said in a statement.

Two people were detained for questioning, the statement said.—AP