Scores of Taliban rebels stormed a district of southern Afghanistan and held control overnight while a police commander was killed in an ambush elsewhere, police said Wednesday.
KANDAHAR: Scores of Taliban rebels stormed a district of southern Afghanistan and held control overnight while a police commander was killed in an ambush elsewhere, police said Wednesday.
The insurgents overran Chora district in restive Uruzgan province late on Tuesday, taking over the police command and district headquarters after a battle lasting several hours, provincial police chief Haji Rozi Khan said.
"They had control over the headquarters overnight but they left in the morning," Khan said. "The centre of the district is no man's land now, we are preparing to go back as soon as we get reinforcements."
A purported Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi said the Taliban were still present in the district and had set fire to the police headquarters.
He said the rebels had killed eight police but this was not confirmed. The movement's spokesmen have in the past exaggerated their encounters with security forces.
In a separate incident late Tuesday, Taliban militia fired a rocket at a police convoy in southern Zabul province, killing the local police director and wounding at least three policemen, provincial spokesman Gulab Shah Alikhail said.
The director, Mohammad Rasoul, was killed when the rocket-propelled grenade struck one of three vehicles in the convoy near Qalat district, Alikhail said.
He blamed the attack on remnants of the Taliban regime, who were ousted in a US-led offensive in late 2001 and have since been staging an insurgency mainly in southern and southeastern Afghanistan.
In another attack, a former commander in the resistance to the Soviet occupation of the 1980s was gunned down Wednesday in southern Helmand province, a provincial spokesman said.
Abdul Hakim Akhundzada was on his way to town from his village in Kajaki district when he came under attack, Muhaidin Khan said, blaming the Taliban.
And in central Ghazni province police arrested six Taliban rebels, including two provincial-level commanders, provincial governor Shir Alam said.
Afghanistan has this spring seen a spike in fighting between Afghan and coalition forces, and Taliban fighters.
The violence, which this month has seen some of the biggest battles between the two sides in years, has left around 400 people dead in the past two weeks, most of them rebels, according to government and coalition tolls.
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