KANDAHAR • Nato planes bombed a compound in southern Afghanistan early yesterday, killing a Taleban commander and at least seven of his men, while locals said the raid also took civilian lives.

The International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) said it used “precision-guided munitions” in a pre-dawn airstrike on a sprawling compound in Helmand province, near a town held by the Taleban for two weeks.

“Without causing further collateral damage, one building in the compound was fully destroyed,” Isaf said in a statement.

Helmand police chief Mohammad Nabi Mullahkhail said the strike killed Mullah Manan, a Taleban leader involved in the capture of the remote town of Musa Qala, and seven of his men.

He could not comment on villagers’ reports that civilians were among the dead.

A man who said he was Manan’s deputy said the commander and 11 other rebels were killed in the attack on a home where he and the others had been spending the night.

Thirteen civilians were also dead, said the man who identified himself as Taleban commander Mullah Nizamuddin.

Isaf did not name the man it had targeted but said he was linked to a spate of attacks in the area including the capture of Musa Qala and clashes with British troops trying to secure the nearby Kajaki hydropower dam.

The Afghan defence ministry said yesterday 15 Taleban were killed in military action at Kajaki the day before. Another 10 were killed in Helmand’s Gereshk area on also Tuesday, it said.

A village chief said by telephone that yesterday the Isaf strike had killed up to 20 Taleban and around 10 civilians who had been in the targeted building which another villager said was the home of a low-level Taleban.

Helmand has this year seen the worst insurgency-linked fighting in Afghanistan with many of its districts apparently out of government control. The provincial governor, Assadullah Wafa, has said about 700 foreign fighters, whom he linked to Al Qaeda, have infiltrated from Pakistan this month.

“Infiltration “still continues to occur in fairly substantial numbers along the border. We anticipate that the Taleban extremists... will move their forces around in an attempt to protect their sanctuaries,” Colonel Tom Collins, a spokesman for the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf), saod in Kabul.

He added, referring to poppy fields in Helmand and traditional strongholds in the same area. He also accused the Islamic extremists of using “human shields, specifically local Afghan children, in order to escape fire” during clashes at Kajaki this week. Similar claims have been made in the past.

“During this action ... Taleban extremists resorted to the use of human shields. Specifically, using local Afghan children to cover as they escaped out of the area,” Colonel Tom Collins, a spokesman for the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf), said in Kabul.

Helmand grows about a quarter of the opium produced by Afghanistan, which accounts for 90 per cent of the world supply, and is the most significant area for heroin processing and trafficking.

Its opium production rose by 179 per cent last year.

Experts say the drugs trade funds the insurgency with rebels offering to protect the illegal enterprise.

The Taleban launched their insurgency months after being forced from government in late 2001 in an offensive led by the United States after the hardliners did not hand over leaders of the Al Qaeda terror network.

A purported local commander said on Tuesday the province would see a major Taleban offensive in spring but Isaf has downplayed such talk as bravado.

“We will launch a very big offensive — the biggest ever seen — this spring,” Mullah Abdul Rahim said in a telephone interview.

“Our troops are ready to go after the enemy. They are waiting for the spring (and) the leaves to appear on the trees,” he said in a telephone interview arranged by Taleban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi.

Afghanistan is at a “tipping point” ahead of an expected Taleban spring offensive, a think tank report warned yesterday as President Hamid Karzai was due for talks in London.

The report was released hours ahead of talks in London between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose country is the second biggest provider of troops in the country.

“The international community has reached a tipping point in southern Afghanistan,” said the report by the Senlis Council think tank.