Day 3 of Taliban’s Spring Offensive: Afghan Police Official Killed

Qahar Khurm Aabi, Afghan border police chief was killed on his way to work on Day 3 of the Spring Offensive.

File photo: Afghan security force member inspects the site of a suicide attack in Nangarhar province, east Afghanistan on Monday, 11 April 2016. (Photo: IANS)

Taliban insurgents ambushed and killed a police commander and seven other people, including three women, in Afghanistan on Thursday. Two of his bodyguards were also killed in the attack, the official added.

The attack has come two days after the insurgents announced the beginning of their spring offensive.

Qahar Khurm Aabi, highway police commander in the northern provinces of Takhar and Kunduz, was killed in a Taliban ambush said Khalil Aseer, Takhar police spokesman.

He was attacked in Farkhar district along with four of his guards on his way to work. The three women killed were passers-by, he said.

File photo: Afghan security force members inspecting the site of a suicide attack in Nangarhar province, eastern Afghanistan on Monday, 11 April 2016. (Photo: IANS)

Three was no immediate comment from the Taliban.

About 5,500 members of the Afghan security forces were killed last year and more than 14,000 were wounded.

The Taliban insurgency has gained strength since the withdrawal of international forces from combat at the end of 2014 and the Taliban are stronger than at any point since the were driven from power by US-backed forces in 2001.

The militants, fighting to drive Afghanistan’s Western-backed government from power, said on Tuesday they had launched “Operation Omari”.

The offensive was named after the late Taliban founder Mullah Mohammad Omar, aimed at defeating the government and establishing their version of an Islamic state.

The seasons have long shaped violence in Afghanistan with fighting easing off in the winter, when mountain passes get snowed in, and picking up again in the spring and summer.