KABUL, Afghanistan — Militant attacks in once-calm northern Afghanistan killed at least 11 police officers and a government official whose car was hit by a remote-controlled bomb, officials said Sunday.
In the south, NATO said a U.S. service member died Sunday after an insurgent attack, and a combined coalition and Afghan patrol killed a senior Taliban commander and a dozen other insurgents who were discovered planting a homemade bomb on a road.
Insurgents as well as coalition forces have escalated attacks across the country in recent months, as the NATO-led force pours in 30,000 more U.S. troops in a new push to break the Taliban’s hold in its strongholds and establish stable Afghan governance.
International and Afghan commandos have been conducting near-nightly raids to capture or kill insurgents, while the Taliban has launched attacks on army bases and officials and planted thousands of roadside bombs.
Insurgents in Kunduz province overran a checkpoint near the northern border with Tajikistan on Saturday, killing at least six of the nine border police stationed there, provincial Deputy Police Chief Abdul Rahman Aqtash said.
Some reports said the guards were poisoned before the attack to make it easier for the insurgents, said Mahbobullah Sayedi, a spokesman for the provincial government. He said three border police stationed at the checkpoint were missing.
“It is possible that the militants used one of the border police, someone who was working there,” Sayedi said. “We don’t know anything about the three others, where they are. So that is why we are sending a delegation to find out exactly what happened.”
Aqtash left Sunday morning to go to the attack site but was forced to turn back when another gun battle on the road to the border made it unsafe to travel, he said by telephone.
Northern Afghanistan was once relatively calm, but Taliban and other militants have become increasingly active in the past two years.
On Saturday in Kunduz, militants killed the chief of Qala Zal district and his bodyguard by remotely detonating a bomb as he passed in his car, the Ministry of Interior said.
Five other police died Saturday when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb in northeastern Badakshan province, which is next to Kunduz, the ministry said in a statement.
Earlier this month, Taliban suicide attackers stormed a house used by an American aid organization in Kunduz City, killing four people before dying in a fierce five-hour battle with Afghan security forces.
RELATED
Marines learn to track Taliban on L.A. streets
LOS ANGELES — A police sergeant steadily rattled off tips to a young Marine riding shotgun as they raced in a patrol car to a drug bust: Be aware of your surroundings. Watch people’s body language. Build rapport.
Marine Lt. Andrew Abbott, 23, took it in as he peered out at the graffiti- covered buildings, knowing that the lessons he learned recently could help him fight the Taliban in Afghanistan.
“People are the center of gravity, and if you do everything you can to protect them, then they’ll protect you,” he said. “That’s something true here and pretty much everywhere.”
Abbott was among 70 Camp Pendleton Marines in a training exercise that aims to adapt the investigative techniques used against street gangs to take on the Taliban more as a powerful drug-trafficking mob than an insurgency.
The Marines hope learning to work like a cop on a beat will help them better track the Taliban, build relationships with Afghans leery of foreign troops and make them better teachers as they try to professionalize an Afghan police force beset by corruption.
