AFGHANISTAN: The decapitated bodies of six Afghan policemen were found in southern Afghanistan at the weekend, on the same day Taliban guerrillas claimed to have beheaded a missing US commando, officials said yesterday.
The bodies and heads of the policemen, who had been abducted by Taliban guerrillas on Friday, were found dumped in Deshu district of Helmand province, near the border with Pakistan, on Saturday, provincial governor Sher Mohammad Akhundzada said.
"Six policemen were beheaded yesterday, it was a very brutal act," he reported, adding that government forces were searching for those responsible.
The policemen were kidnapped in an ambush on Friday in which four colleagues were killed and three wounded, Akhundzada said, while denying earlier reports quoting him as saying that 10 officers had been found beheaded.
The bodies were found the same day Taliban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi said the guerrillas had beheaded a missing American commando in the eastern province of Kunar.
US military spokeswoman Lieut Cindy Moore said she had no information to confirm the claim that the missing commando had been killed, or had been captured, and a search for him was continuing.
Two Afghan drivers were killed when Taliban guerrillas attacked and set fire to a convoy of 15 trucks bringing fuel from Pakistan to US military forces in the central province of Uruzgan yesterday, a security official said.
The attack took place in the Shawali Kot district of Kandahar province. Also in Kandahar, security forces killed three Taliban guerrillas near the town of Spin Boldak on the border with Pakistan. And in Kabul, a rocket exploded on a roadside about 500 metres from the heavily fortified compounds of the US embassy and the Nato-led peacekeeping force early yesterday. It caused some damage to the wall of a house but no casualties.
Hundreds of US and Afghan troops have been searching for the missing commando, part of a four-man navy Seal team that went missing in Kunar during a clash with militants on June 28th.
The US military has said two of the missing commandos were found dead last Monday, having been killed in action, while another had been rescued and one was missing.
A US helicopter sent to aid the Seals was shot down the same day they went missing, killing all 16 troops aboard, the heaviest US losses in a single combat operation in Afghanistan. - (Reuters)