The latest deaths came as Operation Mountain Thrust, the biggest anti-Taliban operation since the extremists were removed from government in 2001, pushed on in the south.

Warplanes dropped bombs on a group of rebels in Sangin district of Helmand province early Sunday, the provincial police chief said.

"The movement and the group of Taliban were detected first in the area and then the planes bombed them," police chief Mohammad Nabi Mullah Khail said. Among the dead was a local commander, he said.

The coalition did not immediately confirm the strikes.

The bombing followed an attack on a British base in Sangin late Saturday with small arms and rocket-propelled grenade fire in which two British soldiers and an Afghan interpreter were killed, the British military said.

Four coalition soldiers were also wounded in the battle, in which attack helicopters and planes were called in to assist forces on the ground.

The base had been under attack for three nights, said spokesman Captain Drew Gibson. "The first two it was fairly minor -- last night was a fairly concentrated attack," he said.

The fatalities were the fourth and fifth British soldiers to be killed in Afghanistan in the past three weeks and since a new British deployment of around 2,000 troops began arriving around late April.

Another two British soldiers have also been killed in Afghanistan since British troops deployed here in late 2001, when they were part of a coalition that helped to topple the extremist Taliban government.

Gibson said the force had not yet determined how many of the attackers died.

The Helmand police chief said earlier that 12 Taliban were killed in fighting that erupted in Sangin late Saturday after rebels attacked Afghan police and army and coalition troops.

It was not immediately clear if this was the same battle in which the British soldiers and the interpreter lost their lives but a coalition spokesman said it "probably" was.

"Twelve Taliban bodies were left at the site after two hours of fighting with joint forces," Khail told AFP.

The British deployment to Helmand, one of the most restive provinces in the country, is intended to help the government extend its authority and bring Taliban-linked rebels and drug-lords under control.

The province is a focus of Mountain Thrust, which includes forces from Afghanistan, Canada, Britain and the United States and has resulted in the killing of hundreds of rebels since it was launched in mid-May.

Coinciding with the operation has been an upsurge in attacks linked to an insurgency launched by the Taliban after they were ousted when they did not surrender al-Qaeda leaders for the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Despite the presence of thousands of foreign troops and the growing strength of local security forces as well as government campaigns to persuade the Taliban to surrender, the insurgency has only grown stronger each year.

President Hamid Karzai said last month that the militants' sources of funding and training outside of the country's borders need to be tackled in order to stop the unrest.

He said in an interview with the BBC's Pashtu service aired on Saturday that if this did not happen, the violence in Afghanistan might spread to the whole region.

He did not mention Pakistan, but Afghan officials have previously said that rebels are being trained across the border.