NATO Afghan force bombs rebel suspects

Intermittent clashes have erupted this week as NATO leadersmeet in Bucharest with the United States urging its NATOpartners to send more troops to tackle a stubborn Talibaninsurgency.

A security official in Kandahar said an aircraft from theNATO-led force bombed the suspected insurgents on the outskirtsof the city on Wednesday night. Three people had been killedbut it was not clear who they were, he said.

"It is still unclear if they were insurgents ormilitiamen," said intelligence official Amanullah Khan. Aspokeswoman for the NATO-led force said she had no informationabout any such incident.

Violence has surged in the past two years in Afghanistan,the bloodiest period since U.S.-led forces overthrew theTaliban government in 2001 after it refused to hand over alQaeda leaders behind the September 11 attacks on the UnitedStates.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy confirmed at the NATOsummit on Thursday that France would send a battalion of troopsto the east of Afghanistan as part of efforts to bolster thealliance's 47,000-strong force.

A NATO spokesman said that would enable the United Statesto redeploy forces to the south, in turn meeting Canada'sconditions to keep troops in Afghanistan, where they havesuffered heavy casualties at the hands of the Taliban.

In a separate incident, members of a separate U.S.-ledforce killed several insurgents and detained four in thesouthern province of Helmand, the U.S. military said.

The clash erupted during a search operation in the Kajakidistrict on Tuesday, where two British soldiers were killed ina bomb blast two days earlier.

In the central province of Ghazni, south of Kabul, Talibanambushed a U.S.-led patrol and one insurgent was killed and twomembers of the U.S.-led force wounded on Wednesday, an Afghanarmy spokesman said.

(Reporting by Ismail Sameem; Writing by Jonathon Burch;Editing by Robert Birsel and Sanjeev Miglani)