Renewed Afghan Battles Kill More Than 100

Foreign security guards stand near the scene where a car bomb exploded in Herat, in Afghanistan's western province, on Thursday, May 18, 2006. Two suicide attackers detonated car bombs in two Afghan towns - Herat and Kabul - Thursday, killing an American working on a counternarcotics project and an Afghan civilian, officials said. (AP Photo/Fraidoon Pooyaa) (Fraidoon Pooyaa - AP)

Those killed included 18 militants and Capt. Nichola Goddard. Although Canadian women died in action in both world wars, Goddard, from Calgary, Alberta, was the first killed in a combat role, Lundy said. About 35 militants were detained.

Also in Kandahar, the U.S.-led coalition said up to 27 Taliban militants were killed in an airstrike Thursday near the village of Azizi.

The deadliest fighting since the ouster of the Taliban was in June 2005, when 178 people were killed in an offensive between Afghan forces and militants in the Miana Shien district of Kandahar province.

As many as 87 Taliban fighters were killed in the fighting Wednesday and Thursday, U.S. and Afghan officials said. Commanders of the U.S.-led coalition were still studying whether the attacks across the south were coordinated, Lundy said.

Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Zahir Azimi said the impending handover of power in the south to NATO troops could be fanning the southern violence.

"Maybe the Taliban is trying to show NATO that they are active there, but coalition and NATO forces are both strong," he said.

NATO plans to deploy thousands of extra troops from nations including Canada, Britain and the Netherlands to take control of security operations from the U.S.-led coalition, which has been hunting for Taliban and al-Qaida militants in the south since late 2001.

By the end of this year, NATO will also assume command in the volatile eastern region of Afghanistan, where U.S. forces will continue to operate but under the military alliance. But recent violence has been escalating beyond the south and the east, as militants expand their campaigns outside their bases along the Pakistan border.

One of Thursday's suicide bombers attacked in Herat, a city near the Iranian border not under Taliban control and until now spared much of this year's violence. The bomb killed Ron Zimmerman, 37, of Connersville, Ind., who was working on a U.S. project to train Afghan police, his family said.

U.S. Embassy spokesman Chris Harris said two other Americans were wounded. The blast incinerated the vehicle, which was flipped on its side. Heavily armed foreign security guards protected the scene, where a severed limb lay in the road.

Later at the site, American investigators and military personnel, fearing another suicide attack, shot and killed an Afghan driver who ran a checkpoint, the embassy said.

A second suicide car bomber attacked near the gates of an Afghan army base in Ghazni province, 70 miles south of Kabul, said Sher Alam, a government spokesman. The blast killed a civilian on a motorbike and wounded a pedestrian.

Also in Ghazni, militants ambushed two police patrols, killing two officers and wounding five, Alam said.

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Associated Press writer Jason Straziuso in Kabul contributed to this report.