KANDAHAR, Aug 17: Ten policemen were killed in Afghanistan on Thursday when a US plane mistakenly bombed a patrol, President Hamid Karzai said, but the US-led force said it had only hit ‘extremists’.

Two suicide bombs struck the south of the country, wounding a US soldier and eight policemen, and the US-led force announced it had killed eight militants in a gunbattle in the east.

The plane that dropped the bomb on a police patrol in eastern Paktika province may have mistaken the convoy for a band of Taliban attackers, provincial border police regiment commander Abdul Hamid said.

Abdul Hamid said 12 people were killed, while a statement in which Mr Karzai the attack said 10 policemen died. Mr Karzai had been briefed on the bombing by the provincial governor and interior ministry, it said.

However the US-led force said its aircraft struck vehicles that were occupied by ‘extremists’ who had just attacked an Afghan patrol, leaving one Afghan soldier dead.

“The extremists fled the area in two trucks identified by coalition ground forces and this information was relayed to coalition aircraft overhead,” the US-led forces said in a statement.—AFP