Taleban fighters ambushed and killed 18 Afghan policemen, including a provincial director, in the biggest attack on Afghanistan's fledgling police force, the government said on Tuesday.
The policemen were ambushed late Monday while travelling on a remote valley road in troubled Helmand province to an event to introduce a newly appointed district police chief, the interior ministry said.
The battle that followed lasted until early Tuesday, spokesman Yousuf Stanizai told AFP.
"Eighteen police, including the Helmand province police director Amanullah Khan, were martyred last night in an ambush," Stanizai said. Four other policemen were wounded, he said.
It was the highest number of deaths in a single attack on the police force that began forming after the fundamentalist Taleban regime was booted out of power in late 2001, he said.
Stanizai blamed the attack on "enemies of peace", a term Afghan officials use to refer to Taleban insurgents blamed for almost daily guerrilla-style attacks, mostly in southern and eastern Afghanistan.
Four confirmed suicide attacks in the city of Kandahar in the past week have been blamed on the Taleban, increasing fears the insurgents are adopting Iraq-style techniques as they try to bring down the Afghan government.
The attacks, two of which were targeted at foreign nationals, did not however cause significant casualties. In separate attacks on Monday, two suicide bombers killed a former Mujahedin commander allied to the government of President Hamid Karzai and another person, Stanizai said. Nine people were wounded, two critically.
Last Wednesday another suicide bomber attacked a Canadian patrol near Kandahar, killing an Afghan child. And on Sunday a suicide bomber rammed into a convoy from the British embassy, wounding four British private security guards.
The four attacks came after a suicide bomber killed eight soldiers and a civilian outside an army base in the capital Kabul nearly two weeks ago in an attack also blamed on Taleban-linked militants.
Despite the slew of attacks, officials are keen to dismiss the Taleban's capacity.
"They cannot launch organised attacks and they cannot fight in fronts. That is why they carry out such suicide attacks which illustrates their weakness," Stanizai said.
"This is not unusual and the situation is entirely under control... this is not a big threat," presidential spokesman Karim Rahimi said.
In the latest incident involving US troops, two were wounded on Monday when their patrol came under fire in eastern Kunar province, the coalition said.
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