Twelve NATO soldiers were killed in Afghanistan in the deadliest 24 hours for the alliance this year, underlining a growing Taliban momentum in defiance of calls for peace talks.

Seven Americans, two Australians and one French soldier were killed on Monday as they pursued a nearly nine-year war against an insurgent Taliban militia that is seeking to overthrow the Western-backed government.
Two more soldiers were killed in an improvised bomb attack in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday, NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said, without giving any further details.
Six of the U.S. soldiers were killed by improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and another was killed by small arms fire, Washington announced.
The two Australians, who were training Afghan troops, were killed by a roadside bomb during a patrol in the province of Uruzgan.
France said one of its troops was killed and three others wounded in a rocket attack by Taliban militants in the east of the country.
Furthermore, two foreign contractors, one of them American, were killed in a suicide attack on an Afghan police training centre in the southern city of Kandahar on Monday, the U.S. embassy said.
The combat toll exceeded the deaths of 11 French soldiers on one day in August 2008 and came after a landmark ""peace jirga"" in Kabul last week agreed to offer an olive branch to militants.
Some 1,600 delegates from across Afghanistan's political spectrum endorsed President Hamid Karzai's plan which included giving jobs and money to militants who lay down arms, as well as removal of leaders from a UN terrorist blacklist.
-----Intel chief quits
The former head of Afghanistan’s intelligence service quit after seeing himself as an obstacle to Karzai’s plan to reach out to the insurgents for talks, he said Monday, a day after his resignation.
Amrullah Saleh – a key figure in the anti-Taliban fight for six years – said Karzai had already lost faith in his security forces before an attack on a peace conference last week.
In an interview at his home in Kabul, Saleh described plans to negotiate with insurgents as a “disgrace,” and said one of the main reasons he quit was Karzai had ordered a review of Taliban prisoners in detention, reported Reuters.
-------------Taliban reintegration
U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrook said Tuesday in Madrid that the Afghan government must outline how international funding for a plan to reintegrate Taliban fighters who renounce violence will be overseen before it begins operating.
In a news conference Holbrooke emphasized the importance and asked for the “details of how it will be administered and overseen” before the international conference in Kabul on July 20. The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon along with foreign ministers from several Western nations are scheduled to attend.
-------Kandahar attack
NATO, U.S. and Afghan troops are also preparing their biggest offensive yet against the Taliban in Kandahar province, with total foreign troop numbers in the country set to peak at 150,000 by August.
President Barack Obama ordered the U.S. war effort to be ramped up in the hope that an initial surge will break the back of the Taliban insurgency and allow him to start drawing down troops next year.
Obama and his military commanders are banking on a push into the militant bastion of Kandahar -- the birthplace of the Taliban and seat of their five-year government -- to defeat the movement.
U.S. military have warned that casualty tolls will naturally climb during the increased operations.
Photo: NATO’s soldiers of ISAF guard the scene of multiple suicide bomb attacks by Taliban militants in Kandahar on Monday, June 7, 2010. (Photo: Homayoun Shiab/EPA