Dozens of Taleban rebels attacked the office of a district police chief in southern Afghanistan before dawn yesterday, triggering a shootout that left seven assailants dead and five Afghan police officers wounded, police said. The battle happened in Registan district, about 150 kilometers south of the city of Kandahar, said Haji Sher Agha, the district police chief. He said the surviving rebels, armed with assault rifles and other weapons, fled afterward with an unknown number of their wounded. Afghan security forces were looking for them. “We killed seven Taleban and we have their bodies,” he said. Hours later, a roadside bomb struck a vehicle carrying Afghan police officers in neighboring Helmand province, killing two of them and injuring two others.