Twenty-two Afghans were killed and three US soldiers injured in the latest attacks linked to the war-battered country's former Taliban regime, officials said on Monday. Militants from the fundamentalist Islamic group, ousted by the US-led forces in late 2001, attacked a district in Helmand province early Monday, a provincial government spokesman said. "Taliban attacked Washer district at 2:30am and killed the district governor Mulla Sakhi and one policeman," Mohammed Wali told AFP. "Eleven Taliban were killed in the exchange of fire and their bodies are still lying in the area. Three Taliban were wounded," he said. Late on Sunday at least one policeman was killed and two were wounded when a checkpoint on the highway between Kabul and Kandahar was attacked in southern Zabul province. Zabul police director Abdul Jabar Uruzgani said seven Taliban fighters were also killed but their bodies were not left at the scene. A highway policeman was killed in an attack on the Kandahar-Herat road in Farah province early Sunday, said Herat police spokesman Abdul Raof Ahmadi. Three US troops were slightly wounded on Sunday when their vehicle hit an improvised bomb during a patrol in the troubled province of Paktika.
The Taliban said on Monday they had freed 23 people from a group of 31 they captured in a district of Kandahar province last week, having executed eight of the captives. Taliban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi said the 23 were freed as they had been found not guilty of supporting the US-backed government.