AFP

KABUL

A SUICIDE bomber killed two policemen in Afghanistan on Thursday, hours after a Taliban attack on a police post on the other side of the insurgency-hit nation left eight dead, officials said. Abdul Maroof Rasekh, provincial spokesman for Badakhshan, in the country’s far north-east, said: “A suicide attacker targeted a group of local police forces in Keshm district on Thursday killing the commander of local police in the district and one of his bodyguards.” He named the commander as Nazek Mir, adding that 18 civilians had been wounded in the bombing, most of them seriously. The Taliban could not immediately be reached for comment. Earlier, Naqibullah Farahi, spokesman for the western province of Farah, which borders Iran, said Taliban gunmen had killed eight local policemen in an attack on a remote post in Khaki Safed district on Wednesday. “There were eight people in the post and all were killed,” he said. Taliban spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi claimed responsibility for that attack and said 12 local policemen had been killed. The Taliban regularly exaggerate their claims. Afghan police are regularly targeted by the militants who have been fighting a decade-long insurgency against President Hamid Karzai’s Western-backed government. Earlier this week six people including four policemen were poisoned and shot dead at a police post in Helmand province, which neighbours Farah, days after a policeman in Paktika province poisoned and then shot dead nine of his colleagues while they slept.