A suicide bomber blew himself up outside an Afghan police headquarters in the east of the country today, killing at least eight people, officials said.
Seven of those killed in the suicide attack in Khost were border police and the eighth was a civilian, the Interior Ministry said in a statement. Six policemen were also wounded.
Taliban commander Mullah Hayatullah Khan told Reuters by telephone his insurgents had carried out the attack.
The attack came as the US-led coalition said it had killed 35 Taliban insurgents in fierce fighting supported by air strikes and artillery on Thursday.
The Taliban have vowed to step up suicide bombings as fighting against US-led forces intensifies after the traditional winter lull.
Foreign and Afghan forces have launched a major offensive in Helmand, Afghanistan's major opium producing province.
A British soldier was killed in separate fighting in Helmand yesterday it emerged, the 12th foreign casualty in the bloodiest week in months for Nato and Coalition forces.
Last year was the bloodiest since the Taliban were ousted in 2001 and many expect this year to be even more violent.
Several hundred civilians, scores of Taliban, dozens of Afghan forces, some aid workers and more than 30 US-led troops have died so far this year.
The Taliban have also kidnapped three foreigners and several Afghans this year in a bid to press the government to release comrades from jail and to begin peace talks.
Taliban guerrillas said they had issued a video of two kidnapped French aid workers - a man and a woman - appealing to the Paris authorities to heed their captors' demands. They were abducted in an area of southwestern Nimroz province.
Civilian casualties are also mounting, some of them victims of Nato and US-led fighting as well as of the Taliban and other insurgents through suicide bombings and executions.
The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission today issued a report saying US marines who killed several civilians in apparently indiscriminate shooting after a bomb blast had acted illegally.
US military authorities are still investigating, but the unit involved was called home early soon after the incident.