Four police officers killed in the latest attack in southern Kandahar

At least 4 police officers were killed on Sunday in an insider attack in southern Kandahar, officials said, the latest episode of infiltration in the police squads.

The attacker opened fire on his comrades, killing four including police commander of Kandahar’s Zhiri district, said provincial police spokesman, Jamal Nasir Barakzai. He told Afghanistan Times that the attacker had escaped after the shooting. A manhunt has been launched for the absconding assailant, he said.

The insider attack came after four local police forces had earlier defected to the Taliban in Zhiri district. Although Barakzai was not affirmative whether the attacker had been a Taliban infiltrator or a defector, some security sources, pleading anonymity, suggested that he had defected to the Taliban and that he had killed seven police officers in the attack.

In another brutal act of terror in southern Afghanistan, Taliban militants executed five policemen in tumultuous Helmand, after accusing them of robbing people on a highway in the Garamsir district.

Pleading anonymity, a government official said five police officers had trailed drug smugglers to Regi Jabar area in the district and allegedly extorted people on highways. The Taliban caught them and later killed them in public in Ismat bazaar area, the source said.

The Taliban spokesperson, Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, has said they killed five policemen when they were extorting people. Gubernatorial spokesman, Omar Zwak, said a delegation had been appointed to investigate the killings.

A tribal chieftain, Hazrat Mohammad, said some commanders usually sent their men for illegal activities to a certain area. “The Taliban killed 10 policemen who robbed people last year in that same area,” he said.

The attacks comes amid a tumultuous peace process, as the Afghan government and Taliban have failed in trust building. Last month, the US and Taliban had reached a peace deal, which was supposed to be followed by the intra-Afghan-talks within a ten-day period of time. But, these talks hit snags due to government and Taliban’ disagreement over the release of 5,000 militants.

Source: Afghanistan Times