KHOST, 13 November 2005 — Taleban insurgents killed at least three policemen and wounded eight in separate attacks in Afghanistan, officials said yesterday.
The overnight raids were the latest in a series of attacks by Taleban fighters and happened in areas close to the border with Pakistan.
Two policemen were killed in an ambush the southern province of Helmand while a senior officer was killed when guerrillas attacked a police headquarters in the southeastern province of Khost, officials said.
The police headquarters was partially destroyed in the battle, they said.
Four policemen were wounded in the attack in Khost while four others guarding an Indian firm, involved in a road construction project, were wounded in another Taleban raid in the eastern province of Kunar.
No Indian workers were hurt and there was no word on whether the attackers suffered any casualties.
Taleban fighters were also suspected of killing a deputy provincial governor of Nimroz province on Thursday.
He was ambushed while traveling from his southern province to attend a conference in Kabul on national reconciliation, a security official said.
The attacks came as Afghan President Hamid Karzai called yesterday on more members of the ousted Taleban regime to accept an offer of amnesty and work for peace, praising the fundamentalists’ former foreign minister as a good example.
The Taleban should in particular return and renounce any plan to “destroy” Afghanistan, Karzai told a conference to promote reconciliation.
“It is our hope that all our compatriots who live abroad due to fear or any other reason come to their homeland, start a peaceful life,” the president told the meeting.
They should “rid themselves of the hold of foreigners (and) not be a part of the move to destroy their country,” he said.
The commission, formed early this year, has offered amnesty to thousands of Taleban loyalists if they stop opposing the government of Karzai, the country’s first ever elected president.
About 640 former Taleban, including ministers, commanders and ambassadors, have already accepted the amnesty offer.
