Seven dead as Afghan troops battle Taliban

Taliban militants crept up on an Afghan government office under cover of darkness early today and launched a gunbattle that left four attackers and three Afghan troops dead, police said.

Elsewhere, an explosion killed a motorcyclist in a tense border province in what a local military commander suggested was a botched suicide attack.

The mayor’s office in Khaki Afghan, a district in the southeastern Zabul province, was targeted by rebels armed with machine guns and rifles, deputy police chief Jailani Khan said.

In four hours of fighting, four Taliban were killed and two more captured along with their weapons, Khan said. Three Afghan soldiers died and two were wounded.

“We are holding the bodies of the four dead Taliban,” Khan said. Reports from the scene suggested there were also Arabs among the assailants, he said, but had no further details.

The motorcyclist was killed on Tuesday in Khost province by an explosion which set fire to his bike and injured a farmer riding a passing tractor, Gen. Fazel Mohammed Sahel said.

“He came across the fields and drove onto the main road near the police checkpoint,” said Sahel, a commander of the local militia division. “There was a military vehicle driving toward him, and suddenly he blew up.”

Sahel said the man appeared to be a suicide bomber, but that he had no idea why the explosion occurred on the open road or what kind of mission the dead man might have been on.

“We think he had explosives around his body. Half of him was simply gone,” he said.

The commander said investigators identified pieces of one tank shell and found another unexploded one with a wire attached to it at the scene, just south of Khost city.

Khost and Zabul lie in Afghan territory along the Pakistani border where the Taliban-led insurgency against US troops and the government of interim President Hamid Karzai has been strongest.

American officials say al-Qaida militants, who are believed to have bases on the other side of the frontier, are also active in the area.