Twenty-two Afghans, most of them militants, were killed and six US soldiers injured in the latest attacks linked to the country's former Taleban regime, officials said Monday. Rebels from the fundamentalist Islamic group, ousted by US-led forces in late 2001, attacked a district in Helmand province, 560 kilometres (350 miles) south of Kabul, early Monday, a provincial government spokesman said.
"Taleban attacked Washer district at 2:30 am and killed the district governor Mullah Sakhi and one policeman," Mohammed Wali told AFP.
"Eleven Taleban were killed in the exchange of fire and their bodies are still lying in the area. Three Taleban were wounded," he said.
Late on Sunday at least one policeman was killed and two were wounded when a checkpoint on the highway between Kabul and the main southern city of Kandahar was attacked in Zabul province.
Zabul police director Abdul Jabar Uruzgani said Taleban fighters had carried out the attack.
Uruzgani said seven Taleban fighters were also killed but their bodies were not left at the scene. The Taleban often take the bodies of fallen comrades with them.
A highway policeman was killed in an attack on the Kandahar-Herat road in the western province of Farah early Sunday and four others were wounded, three critically, said Herat police spokesman Abdul Raof Ahmadi.
Three US soldiers and an Afghan National Army soldier were wounded Sunday by two separate improvised bombs in south-eastern Khost Province, the US military said. All four have since returned to duty.
On the same day three US troops were slightly wounded when their vehicle hit an improvised bomb during a patrol in the troubled province of Paktika, near the Pakistani border. Four US soldiers have been killed in Paktika this month.