Taliban military commander Mansour Dadullah, in the interview shown on ABC News, said the July 2005 suicide attacks on London's transport system, in which 52 people died, were "not enough" and that bigger attacks were coming.

"You will, God willing, be witness to more attacks," Dadullah told a Pakistani journalist in an interview ABC said was conducted four days earlier.

The commander of the Islamic group, which was ousted from power in Afghanistan by US troops after the September 11 terror attacks of 2001, talks about his ability to operate inside neighbouring Pakistan.

"We have many friends," he said. "It is very easy for us to go in and out of the tribal areas (at the Afghan-Pakistani border). It is no problem."

Last month, ABC broadcast a video showing Dadullah presiding over a "graduation ceremony" of fighters trained by al-Qaeda and the Taliban somewhere in the Afghan-Pakistan tribal border region on June 9.

In that video, Dadullah already threatened members of the Nato military alliance deployed in Afghanistan.

"These Americans, Canadians, British and Germans come here to Afghanistan from faraway places," Dadullah said on the video. "Why shouldn't we go after them?"

In fresh violence two police and more than 21 suspected Taliban insurgents have been killed in clashes in southern Afghanistan, authorities said yesterday.

Fifteen insurgents were killed when they attacked Afghan and international troops in the southern district of Charchino on Friday, the defence ministry said.

Allied troops responded with air attacks, the ministry said in a statement, adding that there were no military or civilian casualties.

The two police officers died Friday when they were ambushed in the neighbouring province of Kandahar, a Taliban hotbed, provincial police commander, Sayed Agha Saqeb told AFP.

"The Taliban attacked our police and fighting erupted," he said. "Six Taliban were killed and their bodies were recovered in the area. Unfortunately two policemen also lost their lives in the fighting."

In neighbouring Helmand province, several Taliban fighters were killed when they attacked an Afghan and US-led coalition patrol the same day, the coalition said in a statement.

The coalition did not give a figure for the rebel casualties, but said more than 15 insurgents had attacked the patrol in Taliban-dominated Sangin district, which has seen heavy fighting this year.

They "repelled the attack using effective small arms, machine gun and MK-19 fire," the statement said, adding that "several Taliban were killed" and several more wounded in the brief exchange.

Almost daily insurgent attacks have rocked Helmand, where the Taliban are most active, fighting an insurgency since their ouster from power by a US-led offensive in late 2001.