At least 20 people, including six civilians and 10 police officers, were killed in a weekend of violence across insurgency-hit Afghanistan, police said on Sunday.Taliban insurgents killed two policemen and wounded three in an attack on a police post in the Chapa Dara district in Kunar, provincial spokesman Shah Wasi Mangal said.
In an attack blamed on Taliban insurgents, three policemen were killed when a remotely detonated mine tore through their vehicle in the eastern province of Kunar on Sunday, provincial police commander Abdul Jalal Jalal said.
They had been travelling to a Taliban-dominated district to reinforce police who had been under attack there since late Saturday, he said.
Separately, a roadside bomb typical of those deployed by the Taliban killed two Afghan civilians in the southern province of Kandahar on Sunday, provincial police chief Sayed Agha Saqeb said.
Also in Zhari, which has seen some of the worst of the insurgent violence this year, several Taliban rebels killed a policeman in an overnight attack on his post, he said.
Four police officers were killed in the southern province of Logar just south of the capital Kabul when they were ambushed on patrol overnight, the interior ministry said.
Five Taliban insurgents were also believed to have been killed in the ensuing gunfight, but this was not confirmed, he said.
Taliban militants fighting the Afghan government and foreign forces claimed responsibility for the attacks.
Separately, four Afghan policemen were killed and three wounded when a rocket-propelled grenade hit their vehicle in the southern province of Logar late on Saturday, said provincial governor Abdullah Wardak.
Afghan forces captured two Taliban leaders in the Bermel district of the eastern province of Paktika in an early morning operation, the US military said in a statement.
It said the captured leaders were responsible for planting and transporting roadside bombs. The statement said the pair also had connections with other senior Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders in Paktika and neighbouring Pakistan.