Three Afghan guards employed by a US private security firm were killed in an ambush by Taliban insurgents in western Afghanistan and 10 were missing, officials said on Monday. “The Taliban attacked the convoy, killed three guards of the company and 10 of them have gone missing,” Farah police chief Abdul Rahman Sarjang told reporters.A provincial official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters however that 13 guards had died in the attack. Sarjang said 21 Taliban fighters had been killed in the clash. The Taliban could not be immediately reached for comment.
| Of course not. They're dead. |
An Italian diplomat in Kabul said that some suspected kidnappers were killed in the raid, adding it was not clear who the abductors were. The ministry had said late on Sunday that it believed the two had been abducted while on patrol, together with two Afghans. Since Saturday, it had lost contact with the two soldiers, who were operating in the Shindand district of Herat province and were responsible for relations with civil authorities.
Seven policemen killed: Unknown armed men on Sunday fired at a car carrying police and government officials in the northeastern province of Badakhshan, a provincial police official said on Monday. Seven policemen and five others, including three civilian employees, were killed in the attack, which he said could have been the work of a criminal group. But a Taliban spokesman said his group had carried out the attack in a province which has been relatively secure compared to southern and eastern areas where the militants are mostly active. Also on Sunday, a NATO soldier was killed by small arms fire in eastern Afghanistan, the alliance said in a statement.