KANDAHAR - Two police personnel and three assailants were killed after Taliban stormed a police station in southern Afghanistan's Spin Boldak district in Kandahar province on Saturday, local police said.
"One suicide bomber struck the police station's front gate with a motorcycle bomb at late night. Two armed attackers stormed the building shortly after the blast and clashed with policemen guarding the facility," a district police officer who declined to be named told Xinhua.
As a result, two policemen and three attackers were killed, he said.
Further details about the incident are still forthcoming amid the absence of any official statement.
No group has claimed responsibility yet for the attack, but the Taliban insurgent group routinely claims responsibility for such attacks. The Taliban-led insurgency has been rampant since the group launched a so-called yearly rebel offensive on April 25.
Earlier, at least three members of pro-government local militia were killed and two others wounded after Taliban laid an ambush attack in northern Afghan province of Badakhshan Friday night. "The incident occurred in Keshoo locality of Darayim district when a group of pro-government local uprising fighters were travelling to neighboring Tashkan district. The gunfight triggered by the ambush attack also killed and wounded several militants," provincial police spokesman, Sanaullah Rouhani, told Xinhua.
The group was travelling as reinforcing to support security forces and local uprising fighters in Tashkan which was seized by Taliban militants on Thursday.
Separately, some 11 Afghan civilians were injured in a blast in eastern province of Laghman on Saturday, the provincial government said.
"An explosion occurred at round 11:30 a.m. local time in Hajji Ayoub Market in provincial capital Mehtarlam city.
A total of 11 civilians were wounded following the blast and the injured were shifted to a hospital in the city," it said in a statement. Those among the injured were five women and two children, the statement said, adding none of the injured suffered life-threatening wounds.
The city police has launched an investigation into the incident and no group has claimed responsibility for the blast so far.
Xinhua