19 Afghan policemen killed in convoy attack

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Suspected Taliban rebels ambushed a police convoy as it slowed to cross a river in mountainous southern Afghanistan, killing 19 officers in what officials said yesterday was the deadliest attack yet on the fledgling security force.

Five officers were missing in the attack, which underlined the challenges facing Afghanistan's US-backed government while dealing with a stubborn insurgent rebellion that has left about 1,400 dead in the past six months.

Militants hiding behind rocks surrounded the convoy late Monday as it slowed on a dirt road to cross the river in Helmand Province, then they opened fire with heavy machine guns and AK-47 assault rifles, said Yusuf Stanikzai, an Interior Ministry spokesman.

Several officers were killed immediately, but there were 150 police in the convoy and the survivors returned fire, he said. Fighting raged for hours before the approximately 60 militants fled on foot or motorbikes.

Among the 19 dead was Helmand's deputy police chief, Stanikzai said. Four police officers were wounded, and the five missing were feared either kidnapped or dead, said Ghulam Muhiddin, the Helmand provincial administrator. Four police vehicles were destroyed.

Security forces rushed 200 additional police officers to the area and were searching houses and mountain caves, but none of the militants was caught or killed, Muhiddin said.

''This was a devastating attack on the police," he said. ''We are doing our best to track these militants down."

He said the rebels were believed to have fled across the Pakistani border. Many insurgents are believed to base themselves on the Pakistani side of the rugged, largely unguarded frontier and to sneak into Afghanistan to launch attacks.

Another Interior Ministry official, Dad Mohammed Rasa, said the attack was ''the deadliest ever on the police," a force that now numbers some 55,000 and was set up soon after US-led forces ousted the Taliban from power in 2001 for harboring Osama bin Laden.

Violence continued in other areas. A US soldier was wounded when militants opened fire yesterday on his vehicle near Kandahar, US military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Jerry O'Hara said. Troops returned fire and the rebels fled.

Militants fired two rockets into Kandahar before dawn yesterday, but they exploded on an empty plot in the center of the city. Nobody was hurt. Three other rockets were found on a nearby hillside and defused, officials said.