The Taliban promised a spring offensive of thousands of suicide bombers as the United States, doubling its combat troops in Afghanistan, took over command of the 33,000-strong NATO force in the country yesterday.

As US General Dan McNeill took over the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), NATO said the Taliban leader in a southern district was killed yesterday as part of an offensive to recapture the key town of Musa Qala from the rebels.

The Taliban warns 2007 will be "the bloodiest year for foreign troops", saying they have 2,000 suicide bombers ready for an offensive when the winter snows melt in a few months.

"We have made 80 percent preparations to fight American and foreign forces and we are about to start war," Mullah Hayatullah Khan, a 35-year-old black-bearded guerrilla leader, said at a secret base in the east on Saturday.

Khan says the 2,000 are just 40 percent of fighters preparing to become suicide bombers, a tactic almost unheard of here until last year as militants copied Iraq.

"Now there is great enthusiasm for suicide attacks among the Taliban and these attacks will increase," he said.

Hours after the handover, a suicide bomber attacked a NATO convoy in Afghanistan's second city and birthplace of the Taliban, Kandahar, killing himself but no one else, police said.

Analysts say McNeill takes over ISAF at a pivotal time.

Last year was the bloodiest since US-led forces ousted the Taliban government in 2001. More than 4,000 people died, a quarter of them civilians and 170 foreign soldiers.

"The first 3-5 months of 2007 are absolutely crucial to the entire Afghan effort as the mission has been defined that is, in bringing security to the southern provinces," said Sean Kay, a security expert and professor of international relations at the Ohio Wesleyan University.

From the beginning, he said, the United States did not put sufficient forces in Afghanistan in order to prevent a counter-insurgency from re-emerging.

Source: China Daily/Agencies