A bomb planted by Taliban militants killed four policemen in Afghanistan on Sunday while various security operations against extremist insurgents left around 60 Taliban dead, officials said.The policemen were driving in the southeastern province of Ghazni when a bomb ripped through their vehicle, provincial police commander Alishah Ahmadzai told AFP. A spokesman for the Taliban movement claimed responsibility for the attack.
The interior ministry announced meanwhile that police working with international soldiers had killed 25 Taliban on Saturday in an operation in the troubled province of Uruzgan, which has seen days of heavy fighting. “The bodies of the dead were left at the battlefield,” the ministry said in a statement.
Taliban attacked repelled: The coalition announced separately that its troops, teamed up with Afghan forces, had repelled an attack Friday on a military base in Uruzgan. “There were some casualties to the enemy,” a coalition spokesman told AFP without providing details. The provincial police chief, Jumagul Himat, said 35 fighters were killed but this could not be confirmed by the Defence Ministry.
Two foreign soldiers, one of them a 21-year-old Dutch national, were killed in Uruzgan in incidents on Friday and Saturday.
The coalition also announced it had killed several insurgents Saturday in the southern province of Helmand — an area where British troops have taken the lead in NATO-led operations.. Warplanes were called in after rebels tried to ambush soldiers around Musa Qala district, the centre of which has been in Taliban control for months and is considered a rebel base. The Taliban overran two districts in neighbouring Farah province in the past week: officials have said they are preparing operations to take them back.
In other violence linked to the insurgency, a bomb exploded near the border with Pakistan early Sunday, killing a school headmaster, police said blaming the Taliban. And the Defence Ministry said Afghan troops killed four suspected rebels in two separate clashes on Saturday.