KABUL, 29 June 2004 — Gunmen wearing military uniforms killed seven Afghan policemen in a weekend attack near the western border with Iran, an official said yesterday. “Seven highway police officers were killed in an ambush by unknown assailants,” Interior Ministry spokesman Lutfullah Mashal told AFP.
An investigation was under way into the attack which occurred Sunday in Farah province on a key highway linking the main southern city of Kandahar with the western oasis city of Herat.
The attackers were traveling in two Land Cruiser vehicles and were wearing soldiers’ uniforms, Mashal said. “Either they were terrorists or they were drug mafia ... nobody knows,” the spokesman said.
Afghanistan is the world’s biggest producer of opium, the key ingredient in heroin, and the UN and other agencies have repeatedly warned that the country’s burgeoning drugs trade is funding terrorists and fuelling instability.
The incident adds to growing fears that Afghanistan may not be stable enough to hold presidential and parliamentary elections as scheduled in September.
On Saturday, two female electoral workers were killed in a bomb blast in eastern Afghanistan while 16 people were killed in south-central Uruzgan province on Friday, apparently for registering to vote.
Meanwhile in southeastern Zabul province five suspected Taleban fighters were killed Sunday and four arrested by the US-led coalition force, provincial governor Khial Mohammed Hussaini said.
Senior military officials said yesterday US troops killed five Taleban militants in a fierce gunbattle and arrested four others in Zabul.
A senior military official who asked not to be identified told Deutsche Presse-Agentur by telephone the fighting occurred Sunday afternoon in the small village of Botai. The US troops raided a mosque based on intelligence indicating that anti-coalition fighters were hiding there. Three of those arrested were also injured, he said, adding that no casualties were suffered on the coalition side.
In Kabul, the US military coalition confirmed that troops had arrested at least two mid-level anti-coalition fighters in southern Afghanistan, but provided no further details.
The Taleban regime, toppled by a US-led military coalition in late 2001, have declared war against foreign troops, aid workers and all those supporting US-backed Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
Currently about 20,000 US-led coalition forces are hunting Taleban and their allies in the Al-Qaeda terror network, mainly in the southern and southeastern regions of the war-torn country.
Meanwhile, Afghanistan welcomed a NATO plan to send extra troops to protect September elections but stressed that they should be deployed in parts of the country where they are most needed.
NATO would raise the number of troops in its Afghan peacekeeping force to about 10,000 from 6,500 to help make the elections secure, said an official at a summit of alliance leaders in Istanbul yesterday.
But diplomats said NATO did not yet have firm offers from allies for that many extra troops, a number that in any case falls short of the 5,000 the United Nations and the government have been seeking.
“We welcome and appreciate any kind of help,” said a spokesman for President Hamid Karzai, who left earlier yesterday to attend the summit.
“The number is not as important as expanding NATO to other provinces and deploying the troops where we need them,” said the spokesman, Hamed Elmi.
