KABUL (AFP) - Three foreign soldiers and 17 militants were killed in the fighting against Taliban in Afghanistan. A foreign soldier fighting the Taliban in southern Afghanistan was killed Saturday by a remote-controlled bomb, the insurgents weapon of choice, NATO said in a statement. An Afghan policeman and 17 militants were also killed in separate clashes across the country, the forces said. The brief statement from NATOs International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) did not give the soldiers nationality or the exact location of the incident. An ISAF service member was killed today in an IED strike in southern Afghanistan, it said. A purported Taliban spokesman calling himself Yousuf Ahmadi claimed responsibility for the blast, talking to AFP by telephone from an undisclosed location, saying that it had killed 15 foreign soldiers. Britains Ministry of Defence reported on Saturday that an explosion killed two British soldiers in southern Afghanistan on Friday. Two British soldiers from 3rd Battalion, The Rifles were killed by an explosion near Sangin in Helmand Province yesterday (Friday), military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel David Wakefield said in a statement. They were on a foot patrol protecting the local population from insurgents when the attack happened. Their deaths bring to four the number of British soldiers killed in Afghanistan this year. A total of 108 British service personnel died in Afghanistan last year, the bloodiest for the British military since the 1982 Falklands War. A total of 249 have been killed since operations began in 2001. The total number of foreign soldiers killed in the country in 2009 was 520, compared with 295 the year before. An Afghan policeman was also killed Saturday when militants attacked a security post in the Muqur district of western Badghis province, Abdul Jabar, the provincial deputy police chief, said. This morning Taliban attacked a security post killing a policeman, he said. Six militants were killed on Friday in another incident in Bala Murghab district of the same province, when insurgents attacked Afghan and NATO forces on patrol, he said. Eleven insurgents were killed in an operation overnight conducted by ISAF troops in Nad Ali, in restive Helmand province, the alliance said. The initial battle assessment shows that 11 insurgents were killed, an ISAF statement said. The Taliban insurgency is intensifying as they try to topple the fragile Kabul government and more foreign troops are deployed for the fight, with another 40,000 arriving over the course of this year.