KABUL, Afghanistan – A British soldier died after being wounded in an ambush in southern Afghanistan, while U.S.-led coalition troops killed several militants near the capital, officials said Wednesday.

The militants attacked a British patrol in Kajaki district of Helmand province Tuesday, the British Ministry of Defense said. The soldier was initially wounded and later died, and two other troops were injured, it said.

More than 2,600 people have died in insurgency-related violence this year in Afghanistan, according to an Associated Press tally of official figures.

Monthly death tolls of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan surpassed U.S. military deaths in Iraq in May and June.

The growing Taliban-led insurgency is primarily concentrated in the south and east, but significant fighting is occurring in the west and central parts of the country.

In central Wardak province, U.S.-led coalition forces killed “several militants” while hunting for a Taliban leader said to have been behind an attack that killed three American troops and their interpreter last month.

Coalition forces were searching compounds in Saydabad district in Wardak on Tuesday when militants attacked with grenades, machine guns and small-arms. The troops fired back and called in an airstrike.

The coalition statement did not say whether the Taliban commander was among the dead.

Militants had attacked a coalition convoy on June 26 in Saydabad, killing the Afghan interpreter and three troops.

Militants also killed a district police chief in the eastern Nangarhar province Wednesday after striking his convoy with a roadside bomb, said Sayed Mohammad, a provincial official.

Separately, a civilian vehicle struck a mine in Khost province in Afghanistan's east Tuesday, killing four people and wounding three, provincial police official Yaqub Khan said. The dead included a 2-year-old and a woman.

In the southern Helmand province, Afghan troops killed five insurgents in a clash, provincial police chief Mohammed Hussein Andiwal said. A policeman and two Afghan soldiers were wounded in the encounter Tuesday, he said.

Separately, police clashed with Taliban fighters in neighboring Uruzgan province early Wednesday, killing three militants, said Uruzgan's police chief, Juma Gul Himat.

Associated Press writer Rahim Faiez in Kabul and Noor Khan in Kandahar contributed to this report.