Taliban militants stage simultaneous attacks on police checkpoints

TALIBAN fighters simultaneously attacked two police checkpoints on a southern Afghan highway, and up to 14 militants were killed or wounded in the ensuing gun battle, an official said yesterday.

In central Afghanistan, coalition and Afghan troops shot dead three insurgents.

The checkpoint attacks, on Saturday, came a day after heavy fighting in the southern province of Kandahar killed 41 militants and six policemen, police said, in the biggest battle in a recent spate of Taliban-led violence threatening this war-battered nation’s new democracy.