Taliban assassinate Afghan police, battle NATO

KABUL (Reuters) – Suspected Taliban fighters assassinated a
senior Afghan police officer, his three bodyguards and a female
relative on Saturday, leaving only the woman’s three-month-old
baby alive.

“They were definitely Taliban. No one can carry out such a
cowardly ambush except the Taliban,” said Sayed Agha Saqib, the
police chief of the southwestern province of Farah.

Suspected Taliban also assassinated a district police chief
in neighboring Nimroz province, killing three of his
bodyguards. Three attackers were also killed, police said.

The Taliban and other insurgent and criminal groups have
been stepping up attacks on Afghan and foreign forces, plunging
the country into its bloodiest period since the hardline
Islamist Taliban were toppled in late 2001.

About 2,000 people, most of them militants but also
including civilians, Afghan forces, aid workers and more than
90 foreign soldiers, have been killed in violence this year.

The violence involves a mixture of opposition to foreign
and government forces, tribal wars, the illegal drugs trade and
crime.

The insurgency is concentrated in the south and east,
mostly in provinces bordering Pakistan, the Taliban’s one-time
backer.

A British soldier was killed and another badly wounded in
an attack by guerillas in the southern province of Helmand, the
main opium growing area, on Friday, NATO said in a statement.

He was the seventh British soldier killed in fighting in
Helmand since the beginning of August, when NATO formally took
over southern Afghanistan from U.S. troops to allow Washington
to scale back.

Britain has faced unexpectedly fierce resistance from
Taliban fighters since sending the first large foreign force to
Helmand this year as part of an expanding NATO peacekeeping
mission in the alliance’s biggest ever ground operation.

A senior British commander said last week Britain’s troops
in the south were pulling back from mountain redoubts to focus
on safeguarding reconstruction in lowland valleys.

Locals around the southern city of Kandahar, the birthplace
of the Taliban, say guerillas are asking them to flee their
homes ahead of a possible operation by foreign troops.

In Loi Karez district, close to the border with Pakistan,
armed Taliban fighters have been coming down from the mountains
for the past few days telling residents to leave, said villager
Nek Muhammad, 50.

The Taliban is telling people to seek shelter in Pakistan
and warning they may be forcibly moved if they ignore the
warnings.

U.S.-led forces recently launched a major operation in the
south to quash the Taliban and NATO has stepped up its own
operations to clear areas and drive out the guerillas.

Afghan officials in Kandahar would not comment on the
reported Taliban warnings.