Suicide bomb attack kills five policemen in southern Afghanistan

A suicide bomb attack in Afghanistan’s southern province of Kandahar has killed at least five Afghan policemen, officials say.

Provincial governor spokesman Jawed Faisal told the Agence France Presse that the attacker drove a car filled with explosives straight into a checkpoint at the district police headquarters of Arghistan district, killing five and injuring six.

Kandahar is the spiritual heartland of the Taliban, and has been one of the most bitterly contested areas between insurgents and NATO-led coalition forces in Afghanistan, the Associated Press reports.

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Militants regularly target Afghan police and military, who are set to assume responsibility for Afghanistan’s security from NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) by the end of 2014.

In February at least five policemen were shot dead at a checkpoint in the city of Kandahar, according to the BBC.

Thursday’s violence comes a day after eight Afghan policemen were killed after a three-hour gun battle with the Taliban in the remote mountainous district of Wardooj in the north-eastern province of Badakhstan.

Two militants were also killed in the fighting.

On Wednesday the UN released new figures showing that the number of civilians killed in the war in Afghanistan during the first four months of 2012 had fallen by 21 percent compared to the same period in 2011, according to the Christian Science Monitor.  

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