In Taliban Attacks, a Reminder That Winter Offers Afghans No Mercy
Not far away, on Highway 1, which links Helmand to Kandahar, the second-largest city in Afghanistan, a police convoy on Tuesday struck a hidden roadside bomb
that killed one policeman and wounded three others, according to Omar Zwak, the spokesman for the Helmand governor.
On Tuesday, 11 police officers were killed in a Taliban attack in the south, but
that was only one in a long and not unusual series of assaults against Afghan security forces.
He did not give recent casualty figures, but Afghan officials have said
that last year 6,287 members of the military and police died and 12,354 were wounded, with more than 500 members of the security forces taken prisoner.
Five hundred miles farther north along the ring road, an Afghan National Army convoy was ambushed on Monday, between Ghormach in Badghis Province
and Maimana in Faryab, with heavy fighting reportedly continuing on Tuesday.
The killings of the police officers on Tuesday took place in the southern province of
Helmand, which has for the last year been the most violent place in Afghanistan.
On several previous occasions, officials reported the death of the Taliban’s shadow governor for the province, Mullah Abdul Salam, and they made
that claim again on Monday, saying he was killed with eight other militants during an American airstrike in Dashte Archi district.
