Thirty-three Taliban were killed in Kandahar province Monday in an operation launched hours after a remotely detonated bomb tore through a police vehicle and killed seven policemen, the provincial governor said.

Three more rebels were wounded and one was arrested, provincial governor Asadullah Khalid told reporters of the sweep in Zhari district, about 30km west of Kandahar city.

He said the Afghan National Army (ANA) and police were backed by the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force.

The Isaf media office did not immediately have details of the incident but said its troops had been involved in a separate battle in the province Tuesday that killed several more rebels.

"Insurgents attacked friendly forces with RPG (rocket-propelled grenades) and small-arms fire," Isaf spokesman Major John Thomas said. "Aircraft were called in to assist. ANA also moved to assist."

An Isaf soldier was wounded in the attack, Thomas said. He was not able to say how many insurgents were killed.

The ultra-conservative Taliban movement, allied with al-Qaeda, took up arms in Kandahar in the early 1990s and had seized power by 1996. They were driven out in an invasion led by the United States in late 2001.

Earlier a suicide attacker blew himself up near a convoy of the US-led coalition in central Afghanistan yesterday but appeared to have only killed himself, the force said.

The hardline Taliban movement that targets foreign troops as part of a growing insurgency claimed responsibility for the attack in the province of Logar, which adjoins Kabul.