|
Taliban rebels kill 3 cops
11/07/2007 19:28 - (SA)
Kandahar - More than a dozen people including three police officers and an Afghan civilian were killed in a spate of violence across insurgency-hit Afghanistan, authorities said on Wednesday.
The three police officers and a truck driver were killed when Taliban rebels attacked the officers' vehicle with machine guns in the eastern province of Paktia on Tuesday, said a local police commander.
The civilian driver died after being caught in crossfire between the rebels and the police, said Ghulam Dastgir.
In a separate incident on Tuesday security forces backed by US-led troops killed eight Taliban fighters and captured three others, two of them wounded in the southern province of Helmand, the interior ministry said.
United States-led offensive
"In a joint operation of National Police, National Army and Coalition Forces in Kajaki district of Helmand province eight insurgents were killed," the ministry said.
Another Taliban guerrilla was killed in Ghazni, also in the restive south, local police said.
The violence was the latest in a string of Taliban-led incidents plaguing Afghanistan despite nearly six years passing since the fall of the Taliban regime by a United States-led offensive.
The insurgency, which has claimed thousands of lives so far, includes suicide bombings, roadside explosions and exchange of fire mainly in the south and east of Afghanistan.
A suicide bomb blast aimed at Nato-led troops killed 17 Afghan civilians on Tuesday. Dozens more including seven Nato soldiers were injured in the explosion in the southern province of Uruzgan.
Another suicide bombing also aimed at a Nato convoy killed only the bomber in neighbouring Kandahar the same day, the interior ministry said.
- SAPA
|