Five killed as Taliban storm police station

Kabul, December 8

Taliban fighters backed by a suicide bomber attacked a police headquarters in southern Afghanistan on Monday, killing five persons as the insurgents step up attacks and foreign forces pack up and leave the country.

The latest attack on Afghan security forces was in the southern province of Kandahar, the cradle of the hard-line Islamist Taliban movement that ruled Afghanistan for five years.

A policeman and four civilians died in the attack that started when a suicide bomber dressed in a police uniform detonated a carload of explosives at the main gate of the compound in Kandahar’s Maiwand district.

Four heavily armed gunmen then forced their way inside, government spokesman Sameem Khpalwak said. The fighting in Maiwand lasted for two hours, before security forces killed the attackers.

A Taliban spokesman in southern Afghanistan, Qadri Yusuf Ahmadi, claimed responsibility.

This has been the bloodiest year since 2001 in Afghanistan’s 13-year-old war, with the Taliban engaging police and soldiers across the country. Dozens of Afghans die daily in the violence.

About 4,600 members of the Afghan security forces had been killed as of November, up more than 6 percent over the corresponding period of 2013.

Foreign troops are winding up the combat mission in a few weeks. — Reuters