The abduction of Gabriele Torsello, not yet confirmed by Italian authorities in Rome or Kabul, came as two more NATO soldiers died in the south in the bloodiest year since a U.S.-led coalition ousted the Taliban in 2001.

Canada's Department of National Defense said both were Canadian.

Torsello was seized by five gunmen on the highway from the capital of Helmand province to neighboring Kandahar province, the independent Pajhwok news agency quoted traveling companion Gholam Mohammad saying.

Pajhwok said its call to Torsello's mobile phone was answered by a man saying: "We are the Taliban and we have abducted the foreigner on charges of spying."

Attempts by Reuters to reach Torsello on his mobile failed. But a Taliban spokesman told Reuters the Islamist group was not involved in any abduction, blaming criminals instead.

An Italian online newspaper, PeaceReporter, which specializes in reports from conflict zones, said Torsello had confirmed by phone he had been kidnapped, but not by whom.

PeaceReporter said it had spoken briefly to the security chief at a hospital run by the Italian relief organization Emergency in the Helmand capital of Lashkar Gah.

He said he did not know where he was being held. Torsello said he had been kidnapped on Thursday from a public bus, according to PeaceReporter.

Helmand and Kandahar are Afghanistan's most dangerous provinces and have been the scene of heavy fighting in the past few months between Taliban guerrillas and NATO forces.

The kidnapping comes a week after two German journalists were shot dead in the relatively safe north of Afghanistan on their way to Bamiyan, site of two famed giant Buddhas blown up by the Taliban in 2001.

Kidnappings, both for criminal and political reasons, are becoming increasingly common across Afghanistan.

Also on Saturday, a provincial government engineer was killed in an assassination attempt on the governor of Lagman province, just northeast of Kabul, the latest in a series of attacks targeting local leaders.

He was wounded in a bomb blast, followed by a gunbattle, as the governor arrived for work, and died soon after.

Insurgents have targeted local government leaders in a bid to destabilize regional areas. Last month, a suicide bomber killed the governor of southeastern Paktia province, an Australian citizen, in what is so far the only successful assassination.

Amid rising bloodshed, the Taliban released a video showing a large, well-armed group fighting unknown troops.

The video, obtained by Reuters on Friday from a source with Taliban links, shows the group's military commander, Mullah Dadullah, walking through mountains and firing a machine gun.

In one scene, several men identified as "spies" -- most of them clearly already dead -- are beheaded and their heads placed atop their prostrate bodies. In another, suicide bombers pledge to give their lives to drive the "infidels" from Afghanistan.

More than 2,500 people have died in fighting this year. The violence is a mix of rebellion, operations by government and foreign forces, tribal warfare and crime. The dead include about 150 foreign soldiers.