Nine policemen, journalist killed in Afghanistan attacks
PakistanTimes.net Foreign Desk Report

KABUL (Afghanistan): Nine policemen and a journalist were killed in troubled Afghanistan, officials said, in the latest attacks in a deadly insurgency blamed on militants loyal to the ousted Taliban government.

Taliban fighters ambushed a police convoy in a remote district of southern Helmand province as the officers were looking for a suspected militant hideout, provincial administrative deputy chief Ghulam Moheedin said on Saturday.

Nine policemen, including the unit commander, were killed in a fierce battle that followed. Four Taliban fighters were also killed, he said. "The fighting lasted for two hours," he said.

Taliban Captured

An interior ministry spokesman in Kabul said the policemen had been searching for militants after being tipped off by captured Taliban that there were dozens of rebels in the area.

"Some two days ago we captured two Taliban who later told us that there was a big Taliban hideout in the region," spokesman Yousuf Stanizai told AFP.

Helmand is one of several provinces in southern and eastern Afghanistan that are a focus of the insurgency launched by the Taliban after they were removed from power in late 2001 in a US-led campaign.

Government officials, aid workers and foreign security forces have been some of their targets in near-daily violence. In one of the worst attacks on Afghanistan's fledgling new police force, which started forming after the Taliban were removed, 18 policemen were killed in an ambush in Helmand about 10 days ago.

Journalist

Meanwhile the journalist, a 22-year-old cultural reporter with a local radio station, was killed in a bomb blast in the eastern province of Khost.

The remote-controlled bomb appeared to have been targeting one of several American-funded militia units that are helping a nearly 20,000-strong US-led coalition force hunt down Taliban insurgents.

Three men working with the unit were also wounded in the blast on Saturday on the outskirts of the provincial capital Khost, intelligence director Sadeq Tarakhil said. One included the son of the head of the unit, commander Khyal Baz Sherzai, he said.

Sherzai said he may have been the intended target, although he had not been in the vehicle at the time. "They attacked my car -- perhaps I was the target," he said. Tarakhil blamed the attack on the "enemies of Afghanistan's stability," a term often used to refer to Taliban militants.

Recap

The Taliban, who gained control of most of Afghanistan in 1996 after years of civil war, were removed from power in a US-led campaign launched after they failed to hand over their ally Osama bin Laden, suspected mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

More than 1,400 people, many of them militants, have been killed this year alone in attacks linked to political violence. In a development that has worried authorities, three pro-government religious leaders were among the latest victims of suspected Taliban attacks.

Thousands of people marched through Khost city this week to condemn the murders, calling the attackers as terrorists. While the march highlighted public disgust with the Taliban, there was still outrage this week about allegations that US soldiers burned the bodies of two suspected Taliban militants in violation of international law.

"If those responsible are not punished, I think the people of Afghanistan will rise against the Americans", said a Mullah [cleric] in the conservative southern city of Kandahar.●