In an apparent assassination attempt, Taliban militants fired several rockets near a school where Afghan President Hamid Karzai was giving a speech on Sunday -- but no one was hurt in the attack, government officials and witnesses said.

Karzai was addressing elders and residents of the Andar district of Ghazni province when rockets were fired nearby, provincial police chief Ali Shah Ahmadzai told the Associated Press.

Some of the audience fled, but Karzai urged calm and finished his speech, said local reporter Arif Yaqoubi.

"He briefly stopped his speech, and the people were concerned and worried. But then Karzai continued by saying, 'Calm down and don't worry,'" Yaqoubi told the Associated Press.

Karzai, who has been the target of two assassination attempts in recent years, was taken away under heavy security following the speech.

Purported Taliban spokesperson Qari Yousef Ahmadi told AP that Taliban militants were behind the attack.

"The Taliban knew that Karzai was coming to Andar district. When Karzai was meeting with the people, the Taliban fired 12 rockets," Ahmadi told AP by satellite phone from an undisclosed location. "The rockets fell nearby."

The Taliban claimed it had fired off 12 rockets, while Yaqoubi said six rockets were launched as Karzai was telling people gathered at a school yard in Andar about government projects to build roads and clinics.

The attack happened as clashes and airstrikes in the Afghanistan's south and northwest left 47 suspected militants and two police dead.

In the northwest on Saturday, a six-hour battle left 20 suspected Taliban and two police killed after militants attacked three separate posts in the Murghab district of Badghis province.

Police repelled the attack and sent reinforcements to the area, forcing the militants to withdraw, said provincial police Chief Gen. Mohammad Ayub Naizyar.

While the southern and eastern provinces are the hardest hit by insurgents, there have been a number of attacks in the relatively peaceful north.

Meanwhile, in the southern Zabul province, NATO and Afghan troops battled with militants and called in airstrikes, leaving 27 suspected Taliban insurgents dead in the district of Shinkay, said Defence Ministry spokesperson Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi.

The operation followed intelligence reports of militant activity in the area. There were no reports of civilian casualties, Azimi said.

AP says neither claim could be independently verified because the incidents occurred in remote areas.

After a winter lull, there has been a spike in conflict in Afghanistan. About 2,200 people, many of them insurgents, have been killed in insurgency-related violence this year, according to an AP count based on numbers reported by the U.S., NATO, U.N. and Afghan officials. In the past 17 months, more than 5,000 people have been killed in the worst violence since the Taliban's ouster.

With files from the Associated Press