Six policemen among 8 killed in Afghan attacks

KABUL: Insurgents killed six policemen and two civilians in southern Afghanistan in a pair of attacks, including an ambush on a checkpoint after terrorists allegedly poisoned the officers manning the outpost, authorities said on Tuesday. The Helmand province governor’s office said in a statement that ‘insurgents poisoned’ the food at a checkpoint in the Nahri Sarraj district and then attacked the police there late on Monday. Four policemen were killed and two were wounded in the attack. The bodies of two civilians also were found at the checkpoint. The governor’s office did not say whether the dead were killed by poisoning or in the fighting. Helmand police chief Ahmad Nabi Elham said, “Three police are missing, along with a vehicle and some weapons. We don’t know if the three missing are involved in the poisoning or if the militants have taken them away. The investigation is underway.” Police at the scene later clashed with insurgents, leaving two terrorists dead, he said. Taliban spokesman Qari Yausaf Ahmadi rejected the government’s account of the clashes, saying Taliban fighters attacked the checkpoint and seized weapons and a vehicle but didn’t poison the police. The Taliban said they had killed 10 police in an attack on a post in the district. “The way they were fighting, it looked like they might have been on drugs. That’s why the police are claiming that we poisoned them,” he said. “We didn’t.” A government delegation has been sent to the area to investigate. In neighbouring Kandahar province, two Afghan policemen were killed on Tuesday morning when their vehicle ran over a roadside bomb in Shah Wali Kot district, provincial police chief General Abdul Razaq said. The insurgents, who have been fighting the Western-backed government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai for more than a decade, regularly exaggerate their claims. Killings by Afghan security personnel of their local and foreign colleagues have ramped up tensions between the allies even as NATO-led forces prepare to pull out of Afghanistan by the end of 2014. agencies

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