Suspected Taliban fighters have killed a district police chief and his nine bodyguards in south-eastern Afghanistan, an official said on Thursday, in the latest of a spate of bloody ambushes by insurgents.
Yar Mohammed, police chief of Mizan district in insurgency-hit Zabul province, was travelling Wednesday from neighbouring Kandahar province when his convoy was ambushed in Kandahar's Chinarto district, Zabul intelligence director Ahmed Zia Massoud said.
One of the attackers was killed in an exchange of fire following the ambush.
"The Taleban body is still lying on the spot and we have sent a convoy to the area to bring the bodies to the center of the province," Massoud told AFP by phone from the Zabul capital Qalat.
Chinarto lies 420 kilometre's (260 miles) south of Kabul near Kandahar's border with Zabul.
Zabul, a mountainous province bordering Pakistan, is considered a stronghold of insurgents loyal to Afghanistan's former Taleban rulers. Government troops, officials and aid workers have come under repeated attack by suspected Taleban fighters there for the past year.