KABUL ? Taliban insurgents stormed an Afghan army checkpoint Wednesday in southern Afghanistan, killing nine soldiers, and destroyed 22 trucks carrying supplies for NATO forces in a previously secure northern region, authorities said.
The predawn checkpoint attack took place in restive Helmand province, while the bombing of the trucks occurred around the same time in northern Samangan province, an area that serves as a key route for the NATO coalition and U.S. troops.
Afghan authorities were investigating whether the checkpoint attack in Helmand?s remote and arid Washer district was organized with the help of an Afghan soldier whose whereabouts since the raid were unknown, said Daud Ahmadi, a spokesman for Helmand?s governor.
?Police reinforcements were sent, and they killed seven Taliban in gun battles,? Ahmadi said.
?We suspect the missing soldier was involved in a plot in the killings of the nine army soldiers, but have to investigate this point,? he said.
Ahmadi did not have further details about the attack, the deadliest single strike against the Afghan army in months.
In Samangan, the Afghan-owned supply trucks, including 18 fuel tankers, were parked when they were struck by a bomb apparently planted by the Taliban. One person was reported wounded in the blast.
Samangan was the scene of a suicide bombing Saturday that killed at least 19 people at a wedding ceremony in a hotel. Among the dead were a number of prominent officials, including Uzbek member of parliament Ahmad Khan Samangani, a former warlord who was attending his daughter?s wedding.
Until the suicide attack and the destruction of the trucks, Samangan was among the few relatively secure parts of Afghanistan. The Taliban has fewer pockets of resistance in the north compared to the south and east, the traditional power bases of the Islamist militants.
A cabinet minister and provincial governor escaped unhurt Sunday when the Taliban attacked their motorcade in Baghlan province, adjacent to Samangan.
Samangan straddles a highway that has been used in recent months as the key overland supply line for foreign forces after Pakistan barred NATO supply convoys from its territory as a protest over the killing of 24 Pakistani troops in a U.S. air attack on two border outposts in November. Although Islamabad has lifted the blockade in recent weeks, foreign troops still rely on the northern Afghan region as a route for supplies from Central Asia.
While the Taliban routinely targets trucks ferrying supplies for foreign forces in the eastern and southern parts of the country, the destruction of 22 trucks was major blow in a single day in Afghanistan and rare in the north.
Source: http://feeds.washingtonpost.com/click.phdo?i=1ed88b35f69c32de326e1489ea6d77eb
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