Taliban in police uniform kill 6 Afghan officers

By Shadi Khan Saif

KABUL, Afghanistan

A group of Taliban militants wearing security forces’ uniforms killed six policemen in northern Afghanistan on Sunday, a provincial police chief said.

Gen. Abdul Hamid Hamid said a large group of Taliban fighters attacked the check post of the Afghan Local Police (ALP) in Kunduz province early Sunday morning, killing six officers in the Zakhil area of the 3rd police district.

Safiullah Amiri, a member of the provincial council, told Anadolu Agency the attackers fled the scene with the arms and equipment belonging to the security forces.

The Afghan Ministry of Interior has been working on a plan to curb such attacks -- in which militants either infiltrate security forces or use their uniforms -- for the past six months .

Meanwhile, the governor of the eastern Laghman province bordering Kabul claimed to have rebuffed the Taliban’s major assault on the provincial capital Mehtarlam on Sunday.

Abdul Jabar Naeemi said 69 militants had been killed and over 40 wounded as the security thwarted the militants’ bid to overrun the city.

Taliban’s shadow governor for Kunduz, Mullah Abdul Salam Akhund, was killed last Sunday in an air raid by Afghan forces.

Kunduz briefly fell twice to the Taliban in the past two years, and the Taliban have heavy presence in a number of its districts.