KABUL, April 15: Suspected Taliban fighters have killed a district police chief and his nine bodyguards in southeastern Afghanistan, an official said on Thursday, in the latest of a spate of bloody ambushes by insurgents.

Yar Mohammed, police chief of Mizan district in insurgency-hit Zabul province, was travelling on Wednesday from Kandahar province when his convoy was ambushed in Kandahar's Chinarto district, Zabul intelligence director Ahmed Zia Massoud said.

One of the attackers was killed in an exchange of fire following the ambush. "The Taliban body is still lying on the spot and we have sent a convoy to the area to bring the bodies to the centre of the province," Mr Massoud told AFP.