Taliban launch Afghan attacks, 23 said dead

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Taliban insurgents launched four attacks in the southern Afghan province of Helmand on Friday and three policemen and 20 Taliban were killed, the province's deputy governor said.

About 200 insurgents were involved in the fighting, and some of them had ambushed police reinforcements going to the scene of the initial clash, said deputy provincial governor Mullah Mir, who was in a police convoy that came under attack.

"We're sending more reinforcements. The fighting is still going on," Mir said.

It was the biggest guerrilla attack in Afghanistan for several months.

Aircraft from a U.S.-led force battling insurgents in the Afghan south and east had come to the help of the police and had bombed the Taliban attackers, Mir said.

A U.S. military spokesman said aircraft had "provided close air support" to Afghan security forces. He declined to elaborate.

Helmand has been plagued by insurgents since U.S. forces and their Afghan allies ousted the Taliban in late 2001. It is also a major opium-poppy growing and drug smuggling region.

Several thousand British troops are due to be deployed there this year under a plan to expand Afghanistan's NATO-led peacekeeping force.

The violence, near the border with Kandahar province, began early on Friday when Taliban gunmen ambushed a police convoy, killing a policeman, Mir said.

Later, another convoy, in which he was travelling, was ambushed and briefly surrounded, he said.

A 30-vehicle police convoy, sent to help from the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, was also ambushed, he said. The insurgents then launched a fourth attack in the area, he said.

Thirteen policemen were wounded, Mir said. He said 20 Taliban had been killed and 15 wounded.

But a Taliban spokesman denied his forces had suffered heavy casualties. Qari Mohammad Yousuf, speaking by satellite telephone from an undisclosed location, said only two Taliban were wounded.

He said 12 policemen, including a senior officer, had been killed.

Dozens of people, most of them civilians, have been killed in a wave of attacks -- including 14 suicide bombings -- across the south and east in recent months but there have been no major clashes.

The U.S. military said earlier the insurgents were increasingly turning to bomb attacks on military and soft civilian targets after suffering heavy losses in battles with U.S. and Afghan government troops last summer.

Afghan guerrillas traditionally scale back operations in the winter when mountain passes are blocked by snow.