Eight policemen and 12 Taliban insurgents died when rebels ambushed a security patrol and a firefight broke out in restive southern Afghanistan, a provincial spokesman said Thursday. The fierce clash in Kandahar province’s volatile Panjwayi district on Wednesday left another seven policemen and nine rebels wounded, spokesman Daud Ahmadi said. “A police patrolling convoy was attacked by Taliban. Eight policemen and 12 Taliban were killed,” Ahmadi said.Maulvi Samad, a local Taliban commander, put the Taliban death toll at one and said the militants had killed 15 policemen. There was no independent verification for either side’s claims. Separately, at least three civilians were wounded in an explosion on a main road in front of the governor’s office in the eastern city of Jalalabad, police said. It was not immediately clear what caused the blast, but militants have carried out attacks in the past in the city. Panjwayi is a known stronghold of the Taliban.
A suicide car bomber blew himself up in a bazaar in Panjwayi on August 3, killing 21 civilians and injuring several NATO soldiers in a passing convoy in one of the deadliest attacks in Afghanistan this year. The district some 30 kilometres (18 miles) west of Kandahar was the scene of fierce clashes between the coalition and Taliban troops in mid-May. Some 34 civilians also died when US-led warplanes bombed a village in Panjwayi. Separately on Thursday, seven civilians including an elderly woman were wounded when a rocket landed in the centre of the eastern city of Jalalabad, witnesses and an AFP reporter said.