The Taliban have killed at least 43 Afghan soldiers in an attack that wiped out an army camp in the southern Kandahar province, the Defense Ministry said Thursday.

Spokesman Dawlat Wazir said the attack late Wednesday involved two suicide car bombs and set off hours of fighting. He says nine other soldiers were wounded and six have gone missing. He said 10 attackers were killed.

The Taliban claimed the attack in a media statement.

Elsewhere in Afghanistan, a Taliban ambush in the northern Balkh province late Wednesday killed six police, according to Shir Jan Durani, spokesman for the provincial police chief.

Afghan forces have struggled to combat a resurgent Taliban since U.S. and NATO forces formally concluded their combat mission at the end of 2014, switching to a counterterrorism and support role.

The Taliban unleashed a wave of attacks across Afghanistan on Tuesday, targeting police compounds and government facilities with suicide bombers in the country's south, east and west, and killing at least 74 people, officials said.

Among those killed in one of the attacks was a provincial police chief. Scores were also wounded, both policemen and civilians. Afghanistan's deputy interior minister, Murad Ali Murad, called Tuesday's onslaught the "biggest terrorist attack this year."