Ten policemen killed in Afghanistan bombing: officials

Ten policemen killed in Afghanistan bombing: officials
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AFP) - A roadside bomb hit a police jeep in southern Afghanistan and killed 10 officers, as a soldier and 19 hardline Taliban rebels died in other violence, officials said Sunday.The police chief of Kandahar province, Mutiullah Khan, blamed the bombing on the "enemies of Afghanistan" -- a phrase most Afghan officials use to refer to Taliban militants.

"A roadside bomb struck a police vehicle. There were 10 policemen in the car who were all killed," Khan told AFP, adding that it happened overnight in the troubled Shah Wali Kot district of Kandahar.

Khan said the policemen were on a routine patrol at the time of the explosion. Roadside bombs are widely used by the Taliban and other militants in their attacks on Afghan and foreign troops.

More than 650 Afghan security forces have been killed in the past five months, according to interior ministry figures. Most have been police as they are a softer target compared to the Afghan army and international forces.

Kandahar, the biggest city in the country's south from where the Taliban sprung in the 1990s, has seen much of the violence in Afghanistan since the hardliners launched their insurgency.

In other fighting, a dozen rebels, most of them Al-Qaeda-linked foreign fighters, were killed in an operation by Afghan and foreign troops in central Ghazni province late Saturday, an official said.

"Twelve enemies, nine of them foreigners, including Uzbeks, Chechens and Arabs, were killed in an operation by Afghan security forces and coalition forces in Muqur district," said Ismail Jahangir, a provincial spokesman.

The defence ministry confirmed the incident but put the death toll at five militants, including three Pakistanis.

The ministry also said that an Afghan soldier was killed and six others were wounded in two separate bomb explosions on Saturday, one of them near the capital Kabul.

Meanwhile seven Taliban-linked militants were killed in another operation in southern Zabul province, an official there said.

In southern Helmand province, also a hotbed for rebel violence, authorities said they had captured a three-member militant "gang" responsible for killing influential tribal chiefs.

"It was a dangerous gang which was trained in Pakistan and was responsible for the killing of about 30 tribal chiefs in the past three or four years," provincial governor Gulab Mangal told AFP.

US-led forces toppled the Taliban in late 2001 after the September 11 attacks on the United States, but they have regrouped to challenge the US-backed government of President Hamid Karzai.

The rebels have some sanctuaries across the border in Pakistan, leading to increased pressure on Islamabad from US and Afghan officials to clamp down on the militants.