Three Afghan police were killed in a roadside bomb blast in southern Afghanistan, while a joint patrol of Afghan and US-led coalition troops killed two Afghan policemen in friendly fire in the eastern region, officials said Sunday.In the latest incident, three Afghan police officers were killed and as many were wounded when their vehicle was blown up by a roadside bomb blast in southern Ghazni province, Mohammad Zaman, a police commander in the province said.
Zaman said, following the attack in Rozi area of the capital city, also called Ghazni, the militants opened fire on the police vehicle, but fled the area before reinforcements arrived on the scene. Taliban militants rely heavily on use of roadside bombings as part of their campaign to topple the Western-backed Afghan government, seven years after the ouster of their ultra-Islamic regime.
The poorly trained and equipped Afghan police forces, which have more than 80,000 personnel throughout the country, bear the brunt of Taliban-led attacks. More than 16,00 police personnel lost their lives in conflict in the past two years in the country.
Meanwhile, members of Afghan and coalition forces were conducting a ground operation in the north-eastern province of Kapisa on Friday night to "disrupt Taliban senior leadership and suicide attack networks" when they came under fire by several individuals, the US military said in a statement.