August 20, 2003	Wednesday	Jumadi-us-Sani 21, 1424

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KABUL, Aug 19: Taliban remnants ambushed and killed nine Afghan police officials investigating a rocket attack in southwestern Logar province that left two dead, a local official said on Tuesday.

The police officials were ambushed on Monday morning while returning from Karaizgay village in Kharwar district some 100 kilometres southwest of Kabul, provincial military commander Fazlullah Mujadadi said.

“Their car was ambushed by Taliban, in this attack the security commander and his eight other police officers were killed,” he said.

The police had gone to the village to investigate a rocket attack on the home of a government soldier. Two of the soldier’s family members were killed and four others were injured in the attack that had been carried out on Sunday night, he said.

“The security commander went to that village to investigate this case and was on his way back that he was ambushed — that is why we can say that is the work of the Taliban,” he said.

Mujadadi said Taliban militants also targeted the soldier because he worked for the government.

In a related development, a US coalition base and a military convoy came under separate rocket and bomb attacks in northeast Afghanistan’s Kunar province but there were no casualties, a US military spokesman said Tuesday.

“Three rockets landed in the vicinity of the coalition firebase at Asadabad on Tuesday morning,” Lieut Col Douglas Lefforge told reporters at the coalition’s Bagram Air Base headquarters 50 kilometres north of Kabul.

In a separate incident on Monday an improvised bomb exploded near a coalition convoy patrolling in the border town of Barikot, 230 kilometres northeast of Kabul.

“There’s an increased attacks pattern on the Afghan people themselves; the pattern of attacks against coalition forces is relatively stable,” he said.—AFP