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KANDAHAR (AP) - A man identified on tape as the Taliban's new top field commander has warned that new recruits are volunteering as suicide bombers and the holy war will go on until Western powers leave Afghanistan.

The violence continued throughout the country on Wednesday with two bomb blasts killing four people, including a Finnish soldier, in the usually quiet north. NATO said it attacked a meeting of Taliban leaders in the south, killing an unspecified number of militants.

Shuhabuddin Athul, a Taliban spokesman, played an audio tape over the telephone to an Associated Press reporter that Athul said was a recording of Dadullah Mansoor, brother and replacement of Mullah Dadullah, the top Taliban commander shot to death in a U.S. operation this month in southern Afghanistan.

The man on the tape said Taliban fighters were ready to avenge his brother's death and would "pursue holy war until the occupying countries leave."

"They will pursue their attacks against occupying countries and the (Afghan) government," he said in a first public statement. "The number of suicide attackers is increasing. ... All of the Taliban, we are ready to carry out suicide attacks, roadside bombs and ambushes against the Americans and the government."

There was no way to verify that the voice was really Mansoor's.

Mullah Dadullah, a one-legged veteran who orchestrated an intensifying campaign of suicide attacks and beheadings, was for a long time a top lieutenant of Taliban leader Mullah Omar. Al-Qaida's No. 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, hailed Mullah Dadullah in a videotape released Tuesday.

Athul has said Mansoor was one of five prisoners released in March in exchange for the kidnapped Italian journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo. He was named as Mullah Dadullah's replacement last week, Athul said.

In a sign that the insurgency could be spreading, a Finnish soldier and an Afghan civilian died in a bomb blast in the northern town of Maymana, about 100 meters (yards) outside a Norwegian base. Four Norwegian soldiers were slightly wounded.

Northern Afghanistan is relatively calm compared with the south and east, but it has seen a run of attacks in recent weeks.

Attacks in Afghanistan have increased in recent weeks. More than 1,800 people have been killed in insurgency-related violence this year, according to an AP count based on U.S., NATO and Afghan officials.