KABUL, Feb 27: An Afghan police officer drugged 17 colleagues and shot them dead on Wednesday with the aid of the Taliban, police said, the latest in a series of so-called “insider”, or green-on-blue, attacks involving Afghan security forces and the Taliban.

The attacks have undermined trust between coalition and Afghan forces who are under mounting pressure to contain the Taliban insurgency before most Nato combat troops withdraw by the end of 2014.

The killings, the worst in a string of similar attacks in recent months, occurred at a remote Afghan Local Police (ALP) outpost in the eastern province of Ghazni.

“An infiltrated local policeman first drugged all 17 of his comrades, and then called the Taliban and they together shot them all,” the chief police detective for Ghazni, Mohammad Hassan, told Reuters.

Seven of the dead were new recruits still undergoing training, officials said.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack in a text message by spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid.

In the capital, meanwhile, a suicide bomber slid under a bus full of Afghan soldiers and blew himself up, wounding 10 in an attack that underscored the insurgency’s ability to hit even heavily guarded Kabul.

The man, wearing a black overcoat, approached the bus purposefully in heavy morning snow as soldiers were boarding, set down his umbrella and went under the chassis as if to fix something, according to a witness.

Watching from across the street, office worker Ahmad Shakib said he thought for a moment the man might have been a mechanic.

“I thought to myself, what is this crazy man doing? And then there was a blast and flames,” that engulfed the undercarriage, he said. “It was a very loud explosion. I still cannot really hear.”

Kabul police said the attack, which was the second this week, wounded at least six soldiers and four civilians. The bomber died.

Bakery owner Mirza Khan said the blast shattered the windows of his nearby shop where people were waiting to buy bread, leaving six wounded.

The Afghan government uses buses to ferry soldiers, police and office workers into the city centre on regular routes for work, and the vehicles have been a common target for insurgents, who were also behind this attack.

Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman, claimed responsibility for the Kabul bombing.—Agencies