4 district police including police chief killed in E. Afghan bomb attack

SHARAN, Afghanistan, July 19 (Xinhua) — Four Afghan police officers, including a district police chief, were killed in an improvised bomb explosion in Sarobi, a district in Afghanistan’s eastern Paktika province Saturday night, a provincial police spokesman confirmed on Sunday.

“Darya Khan Talash, police chief of Sarobi, and three district police officers were martyred following an improvised bomb explosion Saturday night,” spokesman Shah Mahmoud Arian told Xinhua.

One police vehicle was destroyed, he said, adding “the martyred police officers were on the way to a scene where Taliban militants attacked a security checkpoint in surrounding areas of Sarobi, they were part of a unit of responding police.”

In a separate development, three pro-government militiamen and three Taliban militants were killed and three fighters and a militant were wounded during clashes at a security checkpoint in Qara Bagh district of neighboring Ghani province during Saturday night, Wahidullah Jumazada, spokesman of provincial government told Xinhua. The eastern Afghan mountainous provinces have been the scene of heavy clashes for long years.

The Taliban militants intensified attacks, using fight and run tactic as they have regularly attacked security forces’ positions across the country since February’s peace deal between the Taliban and the United States.