Insurgents attacked an Afghan military convoy Thursday in southern Afghanistan and dozens of militants were killed after the army called for assistance from the U.S.-led coalition and Afghan police, a police official said.

The clash in the Shah Joy district of Zabul province was the latest violence in Afghanistan’s south, the Taliban insurgency’s primary stronghold.

Deputy provincial police chief Jailani Khan said the army called for assistance from the U.S.-led coalition and Afghan police, and that the three forces surrounded the insurgents, killing 35, at least two of whom were Arabs. Five Taliban militants were arrested, he said.

“There was no report of any casualties among the coalition and Afghan forces,” Khan said.

Other Afghan officials gave different death tolls for the battle. Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi, spokesman for the Ministry of Defense, said the bodies of at least 34 militants were counted on the field.

The Ministry of Interior, meanwhile, issued a statement saying 70 militants were killed, including two Arabs and four Chechens, and that four militants were arrested.

The varying figures could not be reconciled, and independent confirmation was impossible due to insecure nature of the area.

The U.S.-led coalition, meanwhile, said it had no immediate reports of any activity in the area involving their troops.

Separately, six militants were killed in clashes with Afghan troops in the Ab Band and Qarabagh districts in central Ghazni province, said Sayed Ismail Jahangir, the provincial governor’s spokesman.

Afghanistan faces intensifying militancy nearly seven years after the U.S.-led invasion ousted the hard-line Islamic Taliban movement from power. More than 2,700 people _ most of them militants _ have died in insurgency-related violence this year in Afghanistan, according to an Associated Press tally of official figures.

___

Associated Press Writer Rahim Faiez contributed to this report.