At least eight government forces were killed and nine others wounded in overnight Taliban attacks at security checkpoints in Afghanistan's south-eastern province of Paktia, officials said on Saturday.
The forces were providing security for a multi-purpose dam in Ahmad Aba district, provincial councilor Mohammad Rahman Qaderi told dpa.
In addition, the militants abducted 12 civilians in the province's Samkani district, two officials said.
The district governor Abdul Rahman Zurmati claimed the Taliban want to threaten the people into quiting jobs with the government.
The insurgent group has not commented.
On Thursday, the militants detonated a truck bomb in the capital of Paktia, killing at least five people and injuring dozens of others.
In central Ghor province, Taliban fighters overrun a checkpoint in the provincial capital Firozkoh, killing three government forces and taking 11 others captive, another official said.
Fighting has intensified in Afghanistan after President Ashraf Ghani ordered the country's military to mount an offensive against the Taliban this week following attacks on a maternity hospital in Kabul and a funeral in Nangarhar that killed more than 50 people.
