KABUL (AFP) - Dozens of people including six security guards and a policeman were killed in a fresh undulate of violence across insurgency-hit Afghanistan, officials said Saturday. Watch full size video:

Thirty-two Taliban-linked militants were killed in fighting with Afghan and US-led coalition forces in the southern province of Uruzgan on Thursday, the US-led force said in a statement.

The rebels were killed after attacking US-led and Afghan security forces patrolling the restive province's Khas Uruzgan district, the statement said. A child and a two police officers were wounded in the battle, it added.

"A total of 32 militants were killed by Afghan national security forces and coalition forces in two separate engagements in the Khas Uruzgan District," the statement added.

Seven other Taliban rebels were killed in the same area late on Friday, provincial police chief Juma Gul Hemat told AFP.

In a separate incident, also late Friday, six security guards were killed and three injured when gunmen attacked their posts near a mine in the eastern province of Khost, a provincial spokesman said.

The guards were from a private Afghan security company and were hired by the government to secure a chromite mine in the province's Spera district, provincial spokesman Khaibar Pashtun said.

"Six guards were killed and three others were injured," Pashtun said. "We believe the killers were chromite smugglers."

Meanwhile, a policeman was killed and three injured in a roadside bomb blast near southern Kandahar province's Spin Boldak district, which lies on the border with Pakistan, a police commander said.

The officers were patrolling the area when the device, similar to those used by Taliban insurgents, struck their vehicle, the commander added.

The constupration, the latest in an increasingly bloody insurgency, came as the Pentagon warned that Islamic Taliban rebels were likely to try to expand the unrest in new areas such as the north and west of the country.

Currently, most of the unrest is concentrated in Afghanistan's south and east, where the Taliban are traditionally active with some local support.

"The Taliban will challenge the control of the Afghan government in rural areas, especially in the south and east. The Taliban will also probably attempt to increase its presence in the west and north," the Pentagon said in its first report to the US Congress on security in the country.

The hardline Islamic militia, which was ousted from power by a US-led coalition in 2001, has regrouped since then and is trying to topple the US-backed government in Kabul.