Nato announced yesterday amid a sharp escalation of Taliban violence that saw 16 militants slain in southern clashes and an aid worker gunned down in the west.

Militants fired two rockets into the eastern city of Jalalabad ahead of a visit by Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistani Prime minister Shaukat Aziz. Police said there were no casualties.

A NATO spokesman said 151 of the year?s suicide attack victims were Afghan civilians, including children, while the remainder included NATO and US-led coalition forces and Afghan authorities.

Taliban-led militants in Afghanistan increasingly have been using Iraqi-style tactics, including suicide, car and roadside bombings, in a bid to topple the US-backed Karzai government. ?Such blatant disregard for human life and potential undertaken by insurgents who callously ask to be called mujahedeen (holy warriors) cannot be more clear,? Knittig told reporters in Kabul.

That warning came after a car bombing in the capital Friday killed at least 16 people, including two American soldiers, in the deadliest suicide attack in the city since US-led forces toppled the Taliban in 2001 for sheltering Osama bin Laden.