Taliban ambush Afghan police, 14 dead

By Sayed Salahuddin,

KABUL (Reuters) – Taliban guerrillas attacked a convoy of
provincial officials and police in southern Afghanistan and 11
Taliban and three policemen were killed, the government said on
Tuesday.

In a separate incident, four Afghan aid workers were killed
in a roadside blast west of Kabul, police said.

The attacks come after several days of some of the heaviest
Taliban attacks since they were ousted in 2001 and just as NATO
is bringing thousands of extra troops into the country.

More than 250 people have been killed since last Wednesday
– more than the number reported killed in Iraq during the same
period — according to figures from the U.S. military and
Afghan authorities.

Most of the dead were militants but dozens of Afghan
police, soldiers and civilians have also been killed, along
with four foreign soldiers.

The government convoy, which included the provincial police
chief, was traveling in the north of Helmand when it came under
attack late on Monday, a provincial official said.

“Three policemen were martyred and six were wounded,” said
Interior Ministry spokesman Yousuf Stanizai. Eleven Talbian
were killed in subsequent fighting, his ministry said.

A Taliban spokesman, Qari Mohammad Yousuf, claimed
responsibility for the attack and said there were no Taliban
casualties.

The chief of police in Maidan-Wardak province, Subhan Qul,
said four Afghan aid workers, one of them a woman, were killed
when a roadside bomb hit their vehicle on Monday.

An official at an agency overseeing security for aid
workers in Afghanistan said he had heard that a civilian car
had been hit by a bomb or mine in the province just west of
Kabul, but he had yet to confirm details of the attack.

The Taliban, fighting to expel foreign forces and defeat
the Western-backed government, have attacked and killed aid
workers in the past, accusing them of supporting the
government.

Nearly five years after they were forced from power by U.S.
and Afghan forces, the Taliban appear better organized and more
aggressive than at any time since their ouster.

The militants have not managed to capture and hold
territory but ever larger swathes of the countryside are off
limits to government and aid workers at a time the government
should be pushing its authority and development work into rural
areas.

The violence is also disastrous for Afghan efforts to
attract investment, economists say.

President Hamid Karzai invited investors from the United
Arab Emirates to come to his country, in a speech there on
Monday, as news was emerging from southern Afghanistan of
scores killed in fighting.

(Additional reporting by Mirwais Afghan in KANDAHAR and
Yahya Nabawi in GHAZNI)