GHAZNI (Afghanistan), Oct 3: Hundreds of Taliban captured a remote district in Afghanistan on Wednesday, killing two policemen and driving out the rest, officials said.

Militants separately gunned down two intelligence agency employees, while another in a rash of suicide bombings targeted Nato troops but only gave one of them a bump on the head, Afghan and Nato officials said.

The rebels attacked the Ajristan district centre in the province of Ghazni, about 200 kilometres southwest of Kabul, with artillery and rocket fire, the interior ministry said.

They torched the main government building, Ghazni police chief General Alishah Ahmadzai said. Police pulled out in a “tactical move” following heavy attacks, interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary said. Two policemen were killed, he said.

“We have sent reinforcements and will retake the district.” The Taliban militia, which has stepped up its campaign against the government in the past two years, has captured several remote districts over recent months.

Most have been retaken fairly easily but several parts of southern Afghanistan are in rebel control.In another attack, militants on motorbikes shot dead two employees of the National Directorate of Security – Afghanistan’s intelligence agency – in the eastern city of Khost, said Mirajan, the provincial deputy head of intelligence.

And a suicide attacker detonated a car bomb close to an International Security Assistance Force convoy in the central town of Tirin Kot, causing only a bump to the head of an ISAF soldier, an alliance spokesman said.

The attack in the province of Uruzgan comes a day after a suicide attack on a police bus in the capital on Tuesday killed 13 people.—AFP