KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, 4 April 2005 — Taleban militants stormed a government building in southern Afghanistan and killed up to nine Afghan policemen in a two-hour gunbattle before fleeing, officials said yesterday.
“A group of Taleban attacked the district headquarters of Deshu on Saturday morning and in the exchange of fire nine Afghan policemen were killed and three were injured,” district commissioner Haji Mohamed Rahim told AFP.
“Taleban were in control of the district (headquarters) for two hours and then we managed to force them out.” There was no word on the militants’ casualties. The battle took place in Helmand province’s Deshu district, 700 kilometers south of the capital, Kabul.
Provincial intelligence chief Dad Mohammad Khan told AFP that only four policemen were killed during the gunbattle on Saturday.
An explosion rocked the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad yesterday but there were no reports of any casualties, an official said. “There was an explosion near a government office in Jalalabad, but there were no casualties,” Nangarhar provincial spokesman Abdul Wakil Atak told AFP by telephone.
Atak said it was not known what caused the explosion, saying it could have been an old mine or unexploded ordnance. A Western security source in Jalalabad, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed the explosion, at around 2:00 p.m. (0930 GMT), saying the blast occurred near a governmental office in the capital of Nangarhar province. Last Wednesday, a powerful blast ripped through a car near the provincial governor’s office in Jalalabad, killing at least one person, who was thought to be the bomber.
A bomb explosion close to a border crossing between Pakistan and Afghanistan killed an Afghan man yesterday morning, police said. The attack in the Afghan frontier town of Spin Boldak, in the southern province of Kandahar, comes two days after Taleban fighters killed three truck drivers just outside the town. The drivers had been transporting jeeps to a US base just outside Kandahar city.
Kandahar Police Chief Ayub Salangi did not say who was suspected of being behind the bomb attack on the border. “A remote controlled bomb exploded at 8:00 local time in the morning near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border gate in Spin Boldak. One Afghan was killed,” Salangi said.
There was a lull in Taleban activity over the winter months, but in recent weeks there have been a series of attacks. “We ask Afghans to stay away from military bases belonging to the American, Allied and Afghan forces because there could be a major attack on them,” Taleban military commander Mulla Dadullah told Reuters via satellite telephone on Sunday in a statement declaring the launch of the anticipated spring offensive. In the northern province of Balkh, two men were killed on Friday when their tractor struck a mine, said to have been recently planted in Peyazkar village.
