(Adds Karzai call for Pashtun help, German soldiers suspended) By Saeed Ali Achakzai SPIN BOLDAK, Afghanistan, Oct 27 (Reuters) - The Taliban accused NATO forces of genocide on Friday after the latest in a series of civilian combat deaths, and said they would step up already rising suicide attacks. The strict Islamist group's one-legged military commander, Mullah Dadullah, also denied NATO charges the guerrillas used villagers as human shields in combat against foreign forces. The warning came as a provincial official said a bomb had killed at least 14 civilians in the rugged southern province of Uruzgan on Friday. "We want to inform the foreign forces and their slaves that their defeat is inevitable in Afghanistan," Dadullah told Reuters by satellite phone from a secret location. "The Taliban's mujahideen are ready to fight until death and in the coming days will increase their activities and suicide attacks to such an extent that the infidel forces will not get a chance to rest. "The Taliban will not let the the killers of Afghan women and children rest in peace and will continue to target them." Witnesses and officials say NATO air strikes in neighbouring Kandahar province, where the Taliban began and remain strong, killed at least 50 civilians this week in an area the alliance had said it had cleared of insurgents in a recent offensive. TALIBAN VIDEO The Defence Ministry, NATO and a team of local elders appointed by President Hamid Karzai are investigating. Fighting, mainly in the Taliban's southern stronghold, is the worst since U.S.-led forces drove the group from power in 2001. More than 3,000 people have died this year, mostly rebels but including hundreds of civilians and about 150 foreign soldiers. Recent Taliban video shows a robust Dadullah walking the mountains of Uruzgan and firing a machine gun. Karzai this week appealed to fellow ethnic Pashtun leaders in neighbouring Pakistan to help quell the Taliban insurgency. The mainly Pashtun Taliban freely cross the porous border. Afghanistan accuses Pakistan of not doing enough to stop them, or even of continuing to support its former protege. Islamabad and most Western nations reject this. Karzai sought help from Maulana Fazal-ur-Rehman, leader of the opposition in the National Assembly and a leading pro-Taliban cleric, and Pashtun nationalist leader Asfandayar Wali Khan. Khan, head of the Pashtun nationalist Awami National Party, said Karazi wrote to him and spoke with him on Thursday. "Right now two forces are operating in the region. One is promoting war, hatred and isolation while the other is trying for peace and harmony," Khan said. "We are in the latter camp." Kabul and Islamabad, key U.S. allies in its war on terrorism, last month agreed to call tribal gatherings, or jirgas, on both sides of the border to win support against the Taliban. But the border issue and the division of the Pashtuns by frontiers drawn by British colonisers has long been a source of tension. As NATO deals with the fallout of the civilian deaths, Germany said on Friday it has suspended two soldiers for their part in the desecration of human skulls in Afghanistan. Images of soldiers striking a variety of poses with skulls were published in a major German newspaper and on television, sparking anger and condemnation in Afghanistan and Germany. Germany, with 3,000 troops here as part of the NATO operation, has boosted security at its embassy in Kabul and missions across the Middle East in case of a backlash.
