The three were killed by a roadside bomb in southern Kandahar province that NATO commanders said showed the insurgents' "complete disregard for the lives of innocent Afghan civilians".

Small arms fire and a rocket attack later killed the police chief of Musa Khel district of Khost province in the east, the provincial commander, Abdul Hakim Ishaqzai, told AFP.

Both attacks came as the Taliban described the NATO alliance's announcement that it would begin withdrawing its soldiers from combat duties from next year as a "sign of failure" and renewed its call for them to leave immediately.

The hardline group said the agreement signed in Lisbon on Saturday showed that Washington had "failed to get additional military assistance of the NATO member countries" or a commitment to continue operations in the long term.

US President Barack Obama has said that the 150,000-strong NATO-led force had made gains and stopped the Taliban's momentum, after flooding tens of thousands of extra troops into Afghanistan earlier this year.

International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) spokesman Brigadier-General Josef Blotz said foreign and Afghan troops had broadly halted the Taliban advance and won support in key Afghan population centres.

"Recent developments have shown that progress is possible," he told reporters in Kabul on Sunday.

"Our job now is to build on that progress to increase the momentum that has been achieved and over time to help the Afghan government prepare to sustain the progress."

ISAF meanwhile announced a series of deadly strikes against militants in southern Afghanistan on Saturday.

In Helmand province, more than 10 insurgents were killed in an air strike in Kajaki district in an operation against what it called a "district level Taliban command and control centre".

Armed men had been seen at the location all day and the strike was called as a meeting was in progress.

More than five insurgents were killed during fighting between the Taliban and Afghan and foreign soldiers on patrol in Sangin district.

A Taliban leader was killed with another insurgent in an air strike in Nad Ali district

ISAF said he had planned and carried out attacks against Afghan and foreign forces.

Elsewhere, Afghan commandos and US special forces killed a Taliban leader who led an attack on a Afghan police checkpoint in central Uruzgan province earlier this month, killing seven and wounding one.

An air strike also killed three insurgents as they placed mines in Daman district of Kandahar province on Saturday, the provincial governor's office said.

And two insurgents were killed in Bakwa district of western Farah province, also on Saturday, ISAF said.

Blotz said such operations were evidence that the "clear and hold" strategies were working.

But the levels of violence indicate the task ahead for the tens of thousands of new and existing Afghan police and military recruits, as they prepare to take over responsibility for security by the end of 2014.

Both civilian and foreign troop fatalities are at their highest since the start of the US-led invasion to oust the Taliban in late 2001, with concern about local forces' abilities to provide security, particularly in the south.

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