 KANDAHAR - At least nine policemen, a former governor, his four companions and a security guard were killed in separate attacks in Afghanistan blamed on the Taleban, officials said on Saturday.
A bomb blast Friday killed nine policemen who were escorting the bodies of four Albanians kidnapped by Taleban terrorists fighters last week in an area between Kandahar and neighbouring Helmand province in the south. Initial reports had said five policemen were killed in the attack in Maiwand district but Kandahar’s governor on Saturday revised the toll upwards to nine. “The new information we have got indicates that nine policemen were killed in Friday’s attack,” governor Asadullah Khaled said.
On Saturday, suspected Taleban terrorists rebels killed former Ghanzi province governor Taj Mohammad, known as Qari Baba, and his four companions in the southern province, one of the hotbeds of the Taleban. “I confirm that Qari Baba and his four companions were killed this morning,” local police official Habibullah Jan said.
Baba was working as an advisor to the current governor of Ghazni, Sher Alam. Jan blamed the attack on remnants of the Taleban terrorists and their Islamic allies, including those loyal to former Afghan prime minister and warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, now on the US most wanted list. “Taleban and Hekmatyar’s men are believed to be behind this cowardly attack,” Jan said.
| Cowardly is the right word for Hek. |
Also on Saturday, an attempt to kill Sher Alam failed while two of the attackers were shot dead by his security personnel. “A group of Taleban terrorists attacked our convoy near Gulan district,” Alam said. He said no one was hurt in his convoy and in retaliatory fire his bodyguards killed two Taleban. The rest of the attackers escaped.
Late Friday suspected Taleban terrorists attacked a private construction company site in southern Afghanistan that left one security guard dead while two others were reported missing, officials said. The men, who were guarding a reconstruction site for a private Afghan company, came under attack by dozens of suspected Taleban terrorists militants in Zabul province, police chief Ghulam Nabi Mullahkhil said.
In another attack claimed by the Taleban terrorists, four Afghan soliders were wounded in a clash with Taleban fighters in Zabul, a local commander said. The soldiers were in “bad condition” in a local hospital, Zabul military commander Rahmatullah Raufi said.
The Taleban are waging a bloody insurgency against the new government and its foreign allies. The violence left about 1,700 people dead in Afghanistan last year, many of them terrorists militants.
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