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| Afghanistan |
| 10 killed in Afghan violence |
| 2006-03-15 |
| At least 10 people, half of them police, were killed in new attacks across troubled Afghanistan, officials said Tuesday. In the deadliest incident, militants believed loyal to the Taliban regime overthrown four years ago attacked a police post in the insurgency-hit southern province of Kandahar late Monday, the interior ministry said The attack sparked a three-hour exchange of fire. “Five police were killed and six were wounded in the terrorists’ attack on a police post in Miansheen district lastnight,” Yousuf Stanizai, the ministry spokesman, said. “Two Taliban bodies are still at the site and bloodstains in the area indicate that there have been more casualties on the terrorists’ side,” he said. The attackers were believed to have taken their dead with them, as the Taliban regularly do after an attack. Stanizai would not comment on a claim by a purported spokesman for the militants that they had killed four foreigners who were kidnapped in an area between Kandahar and Helmand provinces on Saturday. Four Albanians were snatched with four Afghans, according to their employer Ecolog, a German cleaning company contracted to US-led forces based in Afghanistan who are helping track down Taliban insurgents and their Al-Qaeda allies.Yousuf Ahmadi, who claims to speak for the Taliban, said Monday the abductors had killed four foreigners but described them as three Albanians and a German. The Afghans were freed on Sunday. Several foreigners working in security and reconstruction projects in war-ravaged Afghanistan have been kidnapped since the toppling of the Taliban government in a US-led operation in late 2001. In another attack, the administrative chief of Zurmat district in the eastern province of Paktia, Mamor Zahir, was killed early Tuesday when several gunmen opened fire on him outside his home. Zahir’s bodyguards returned fire, killing one of the attackers and wounding several who managed to escape, provincial security director director Ghulam Nabi Salem said. The Taliban-led insurgency is focused on southern and eastern Afghanistan. The main targets are Afghan and foreign security forces based in the country since the Taliban were removed. Ahmadi, the Taliban spokesman, said the insurgents were also responsible for planting a bomb in Kandahar’s border town of Spin Boldak which killed a civilian on a motorbike on Monday and wounded another. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |