KANDAHAR, May 28: The decapitated bodies of three policemen were recovered in Afghanistan on Sunday, while Taliban shot dead a civilian and police killed four rebels, officials said.

The policemen had gone missing three days earlier in an area of southern Helmand province that has seen intense battles between Afghan security forces and Taliban insurgents, a provincial spokesman said.

“This is the work of terrorists, this is the work of Taliban,” Mohaidin Khan said.

There have been several beheadings in an insurgency launched after the Taliban was toppled from government more than four years ago. The Taliban, who distribute DVDs showing such killings, have said they are responsible for most of the beheadings.

Helmand has seen some of the worst of a recent surge in insurgency-linked violence that has taken several hundred lives mainly in the south, the birthplace of the Taliban.

In Ghanzi province, Taliban blew up a police vehicle with a remote-controlled bomb on Sunday, wounding four policemen, police said.

“A police search operation (after the blast) located enemy elements in the area. In a short gun battle with police, four terrorists were killed,” provincial police chief Abdul Rehman Sarjang told AFP.—AFP