KABUL, March 18 (Reuters) - An air strike by foreign forces has killed more than 30 people, including civilians, in Afghanistan's southern province of Helmand, a lawmaker said on Tuesday.

The raid happened on Monday in a village in the province's Sangin district, scene of a series of battles between Taliban insurgents and foreign troops in recent years, she said.

Civilian deaths are a sensitive issue for the foreign forces in Afghanistan under the command of the U.S. military and NATO and for President Hamid Karzai's government.

"More than 30 people have lost their lives and it is said that the Taliban and civilians were amongst those killed," Nasima Niyazi, who is a member of the lower house of the Afghan parliament representing the province, told Reuters.

She did not have any more details about the air strike.

But several people who identified themselves as residents of Sangin said the raid targeted a picnic spot where civilians had gathered to play traditional sports. The Taliban said 40 civilians were killed and 60 more wounded.

Both NATO and U.S.-led troops are stationed in Helmand, a bastion for Taliban insurgents and the key drug-producing region of Afghanistan, the world's top supplier of heroin.

A spokesman for NATO in Kabul said the alliance had carried out an air attack to the south of Sangin and a total of 12 insurgents were killed while driving in three cars.

The strike comes amid spiralling violence in the past two years in Afghanistan, the bloodiest period since U.S.-led troops overthrew the Taliban's hardline Islamist government in 2001.

More than 12,000 people, nearly a quarter of them civilians, have been killed by the violence.

Civilian deaths have sparked protests and added to growing frustration among ordinary Afghans that Karzai's government and its Western backers have not brought more security to the country. (Reporting by Sayed Salahuddin; Editing by Alex Richardson)

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