Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[Rick Faurot]

Ten Policemen Killed in Worsening Afghan Violence

Tue August 19, 2003 06:26 AM ET

By Sayed Salahuddin

KABUL (Reuters) - Taliban guerrillas have killed 10 policemen, including a provincial police chief, taking the death toll to more than 90 in one of Afghanistan's bloodiest weeks since U.S.-led forces overthrew their strict Islamic regime in 2001.

Abdul Khaliq, police chief of Logar province, and several other senior police officers from the province south of Kabul were among those killed in an ambush on Monday, Logar's military commander Fazlullah Mojadidi told Reuters.

He said the police chief had been returning from a funeral for two family members of a police officer who were killed in a rocket attack blamed on the Taliban.

"They were in their cars when the incident happened," Mojadidi said. "There is no doubt that the Taliban were behind it."

News of the attack came after police said two Afghans working for British aid agency Save the Children Fund were wounded in a Taliban attack west of the northern town of Mazar-i-Sharif on Sunday, the second such incident there in two weeks.

And early on Tuesday a group of about 20 armed men raided a base of an Afghan mine clearance agency 22 miles southwest of Kabul, beat up some of its staff and stole an ambulance which they later set fire to.

Patrick Fruchet, external relations officer for the Mine Action Center, told Reuters it was unclear who was responsible.

The violence has increased doubts about the ability of the U.S.-backed government to hold elections on schedule next June.

The bloodshed comes just after NATO took command of 5,000 foreign peacekeepers in Kabul on August 11 and prompted fresh calls for the force's role to be extended into the provinces, where a 12,500-strong U.S.-led coalition has been hunting remnants of the Taliban and their al Qaeda allies.

It also comes ahead of a visit to Kabul on Thursday by Mian Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri, foreign minister of Pakistan. Pakistan is an ally in the U.S.-led "war on terror" but Afghan officials say Islamabad has been allowing an increasingly bold Taliban movement to regroup from its territory.

SCARE IN KANDAHAR

In a scare in the volatile southern city of Kandahar, two soldiers were injured, one seriously, in an explosion while shifting munitions at the house of Ahmad Wali Karzai, brother of U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai.

But a local government spokesman said the incident was an accident, and the president's brother was not hurt.

Bases of the U.S.-led coalition came under attack again on Monday and Tuesday, but no casualties were reported.

Coalition bases have come under frequent rocket attack since the Taliban fell but the missiles generally miss their targets and have proven more of a nuisance than a threat.

However, at least 65 people were killed last Tuesday and Wednesday in incidents nationwide, including a bomb on a bus, a factional clash, fighting between government and Taliban guerrillas in the southeast and an ambush on a local aid group.

More than a dozen more soldiers and guerrillas were reported killed in clashes in the southeast at the weekend.

Last week, a government official called for a tripling of the size of the NATO-led international peacekeeping force and U.N. special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi also repeated a call for the Security Council to expand peacekeeping from the capital.

But Western diplomats in Kabul doubt the proposal is feasible, involving as it would the deployment of thousands more troops into a risky environment as well as high costs.

They instead advocate the coalition's deployment of more civilian-military Provincial Reconstruction Teams, but critics say such teams, some 60-70 strong, will be too weak to make a significant difference to worsening security.