KABUL (AFP/Reuters) A rocket attack near the luxury Serena Hotel in Kabul has injured four people, including two members of the Afghan security forces, a spokesman for Afghanistans health ministry said Saturday. One rocket hit the wall of the five-star hotel in downtown Kabul at 6.15 pm (1345 GMT), Ahmad Farid Raaid, health ministry spokesman, told AFP. Zamarai Bashary, spokesman for the interior ministry, said: It was a rocket that hit in front of the Rabia Balkhi hospital. We have four wounded, three are civilians and one is a police officer. Two of the injured civilians were women, he said. It is Kabuls only five-star hotel and has been heavily-fortified since the 2008 attack. It is the hotel of choice for visiting VIPs. Eighty Taliban militants laid down their weapons Saturday and joined Afghanistans police force, accepting a government amnesty aimed at ending the insurgency, police said. In a ceremony at police headquarters in the eastern city of Herat, the 80 men handed over their weapons and pledged to end their fight against the government, said Herat police chief Asmatullah Alizai. Negotiations have been going on with their commander Solaiman as we have been trying to absorb him into the government, he said, referring to Mula Solaiman, a former border guard commander who changed sides a number of times. Police earlier reported that Afghan and foreign troops killed 23 Taliban militants in separate operations on Friday in clashes in southern and eastern Afghanistan. Eleven Taliban died during an operation in Zahri district in southern Kandahar province, deputy provincial police chief Fazal Ahmad Shirzad told AFP, adding the Taliban bodies were left at the scene. In the Sanzari area of the same district, eight Taliban were killed, he said. In eastern Kunar province Taliban claimed casualties among foreign troops after clashes in the Manogai district, but ISAF said only four militants were killed. Meanwhile, NATO took command of the training of the Afghan army and police on Saturday to consolidate efforts on building an effective security force, a vital precondition for the withdrawal of foreign troops. The existing US training mission, CSTC-A, until now responsible for most of the training, is to merge with the new NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan (NTM-A), under a single NATO command, commanders said on Saturday at a ceremony in Kabul. Deputy Commander of the new NATO mission Major General Michael Ward said he believed the move would encourage more NATO training personnel to be sent to Afghanistan, helping to speed the expansion of local forces. Im very optimistic. Weve identified what our needs are and were bringing those back to NATO to get nations to contribute and weve already seen in this run-up, a significant number of people coming in with exactly the right skills, Ward told Reuters. There are some 110,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, including 68,000 Americans, fighting the Taliban that has spread its insurgency from the south and east of the country into previously peaceful areas. At present there are about 95,000 Afghan soldiers and about 93,000 police. Ward said the immediate aim was to increase the army to 134,000 and the police force to 96,800 by October 2010.