Daily Security Brief: June 23, 2011

GHAZNI: Eleven policemen have been killed and 10 others injured in separate incidents in the southern province of Ghazni.

According to new reports, Wednesday morning’s attack on a Ghazni police checkpoint was carried out by two policemen, who fled after killing seven of their colleagues. Initial reports had said one policeman had carried out the attack and killed six of his colleagues.

Four more policemen were killed, and five others injured, when a roadside bomb struck a vehicle in a police convoy on its way to the scene, according to provincial police chief Col. Zarawar Zahid, who was leading the convoy.

Also in Ghazni, five policemen were injured in a roadside bombing while traveling from Ab-i-Band district to the Moshaki area, he said.

—Mirwais Himmat

KABUL) announced. The NDS did not disclose the time or location of the arrest.

Last week, the NDS had announced that three members of Hakimullah Masood’s faction, who had planned to carry out suicide attacks in Kabul, were arrested. Lutfullah Mashal, a spokesman for the NDS, told a press conference that the men were residents of Paghman district and were detained in the Sang-i-Nawashta area of the province with the materials required for a suicide attack.

—Pajhwok Report

KANDAHAR: In southern Kandahar, two border policemen were killed Wednesday night in an airstrike by International Security Assistance Force (ISAF area of Spin Boldak district, the District Chief Abdul Ghani told Pajhwok Afghan News.

The policemen were wearing civilian clothes and waiting for a friend near a bridge in the area when they came under attack, he said.

Elsewhere in the province, four civilians were injured when unidentified gunmen attacked a tribal elder in Zheri district, the District Chief Nyaz Mohammad Sarhadi said.

—Bashir Ahmad Nadeem

KAPISA & MAIDAN WARDAK:  Seven militants and have been killed in two separate incidents of violence in Afghanistan’s central provinces, officials said on Thursday.

Five fighters of Hizb-e-Islami Afghanistan (HIA), led by Gulbaddin Hikmatyar, were killed by missile blast on Wednesday evening as they attempted to fire a missiles on security personnel in the in Karimdad village of Narkh district in Maidan Wardak province, Shahidullah Shahid, told Pajhwok Afghan News.

Elsewhere, two Taliban fighters were killed, and two fighters and two civilians including a child injured, Wednesday evening during a clash with Afghan and ISAF forces in the Mabayan area of the Tagab district of central Kapisa province, according to District Police Chief Col. Padshah Gul Bakhtyar.

Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid claimed that two ISAF soldiers were also killed in the battle.

— Farid Karimi & Bakhtar Safi

KHYBER: Eight people were killed and seven others injured in a firefight between two rival religious militias in Pakistan‘s troubled northwestern tribal region of Khyber, near the Afghanistan border, a government official, Gul Mohammad Afridi, told Pajhwok Afghan News on Thursday.

The gun battle erupted Wednesday night between members of Lashkar-i-Islam, a militant group led by commander Mangal Bagh, and members of Aman Lashkar, an armed group whose name means “peace militia.”

The fighting lasted until Thursday morning, and combatants on both sides were killed. Over the past two months, 60 people have been killed in fighting between the two groups.

— Wasim Yousafzai

LAGHMAN: Afghan officials and International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops differed over two people killed during an airstrike in the Alingar district of eastern Laghman province on Wednesday night.

Local officials and residents said the two killed were farmers and were killed by foreign troops while irrigating their fields in the Wat Jabbar village.  ISAF insists the dead were armed militants. See Pajhwok’s story.

— Obaidullah Bidar

NANGARHAR: A district development council deputy chief was killed in a 9:00 am shootout with unknown gunmen in the Zorabad area of the Chaparhar district of eastern Nangarhar province on Thursday, district chief Muallim Mashooq told Pajhwok Afghan News.

The victim, Malak Khan Gul, was travelling through the area by car at the time. Maulvi Hizbullah, a religious scholar who was accompanying him, was wounded in the attack.

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