HERAT, Afghanistan, 8 July 2004 — Six Afghan soldiers were killed in a daylight ambush in the country’s west yesterday after they were called to the site to assist civilian workers, an official said. “Six people were killed and four were wounded when Taleban attacked their vehicles driving along the Herat-Kandahar highway,” deputy police chief of Farah province, where the attack occurred, Mohammed Rasoul said. “The attackers were Taleban.”
Rassoul said the Afghan militia force soldiers had been called to Chakaw district, about mid-way between the main southern city of Kandahar and the western city of Herat, to provide security for civilian reconstruction workers.
It was not known who had made the request for security, he said. A civil engineer on the site, Shah Mohammed, confirmed the incident which took place at 2 p.m. (1130 GMT). “I was there when the attack took place, six were killed, four were wounded,” he told AFP by telephone.
A spokesman for the ousted Taleban militia claimed responsibility for the attack. “Taleban attacked two vehicles of the Afghan Army. They have killed 10 soldiers in the two vehicles and set fire to the vehicles,” Abdul Hakim Latifi told AFP.
In another incident, a suspected Taleban militant was shot dead in southcentral Uruzgan province yesterday after he opened fire on an Afghan National Army checkpoint in troubled Deh Rawood, district chief Amir Khan told AFP. Afghanistan has been hit by a wave of violence against pro-government forces and humanitarian and construction workers in the lead-up to elections scheduled for autumn, the first polls since the ousting of the Taleban in a US-led offensive in late 2001.
Meanwhile, Afghan security forces have arrested three Americans and four Afghans after a shootout in the capital and accused them of illegally detaining and interrogating locals, security officials said yesterday.
A US embassy spokesman identified one of the Americans as Jonathan K. Idema, who the US military says has misrepresented himself in the past as a US government or military official. Police said they exchanged small-arms fire during the raid on the illegal jail in the relatively upmarket Karteh Parwan district of Kabul on Monday, but there were no injuries.
