Six police and a civilian were killed Wednesday when US-led forces targeting Taliban rebels bombed a police station in southern Afghanistan, the force and a local official said.

Thirteen others were also wounded in the air raid, which hit a police station in the troubled province of Zabul, a spokesman for the force told AFP .

us airstrike in afghanistan 101208 "One local national and six policemen were killed and 13 other people were wounded in an air strike," said the spokesman, who asked not to be named, adding that the raid was intended to hit a "Taliban commander."

Deputy provincial police chief Ghulam Jailani Khan said the bomb hit just before dawn and "totally destroyed" the police station.

"Six policemen were killed. A civilian man was killed in a nearby house," Khan said.

"We don't know how it happened. An investigation is ongoing."

The military spokesman said a joint investigation had been launched, without giving further details.

Civilians and Afghan security forces are often the unintended victims of raids by international forces targeting Taliban and other militants.

Nine Afghan soldiers were killed on October 22 when helicopters from the US-led force bombed them in a similar incident in the eastern province of Khost, on the border with Pakistan, where the Islamic rebels are active.

90 civilians killed in August

About 70,000 international military forces including those of NATO are stationed in Afghanistan to fight a resurgent Taliban-led insurgency launched in 2001.

President Hamid Karzai's government has repeatedly called on the forces to review their rules of operations to avoid such incidents, warning they serve only to turn Afghans against international efforts here.

In August this year, more than 90 civilians, most of them children, were killed in an air raid by the US-led forces against Taliban-linked militants in the western province of Herat.

The Taliban were in government between 1996 and 2001 before being ousted in a US-led invasion following the September 11, 2001 attacks on US cities which they blamed on Al-Qaeda operatives based in Afghanistan.

Since ousting the Taliban, the international forces backing the United States are chasing the remnants of the Taliban, who are waging an insurgency that has gained pace in recent years.

US president-elect Barack Obama has vowed to send more troops to the war-ravaged nation to defeat the insurgency that many see undermining US and its other Western allies efforts to rebuild Afghanistan.