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KANDAHAR, Oct 12: Five Afghan NGO workers were killed in an ambush in insurgency-hit southern Afghanistan Wednesday, while six policemen were killed in a separate attack blamed on the Taliban, officials said,report agencies.
The employees of the Afghan Health Services, a non-governmental organisation, were attacked 35 kilometres (21 miles) west of the volatile city of Kandahar, once the stronghold of the ousted Taliban regime, the group said.
The attack occurred while US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was in the capital Kabul to meet President Hamid Karzai and said Afghans were "opening a new page in their history" after elections.
Hours before Rice arrived, four rockets were fired in Kabul, wounding two guards at the Canadian ambassador's home, officials said.
The six policemen were killed in an ambush Tuesday in Uruzgan province, governor Jan Mohammad Khan said.
A seventh policeman was missing, the governor said, blaming the attack on the remnants of the Taliban, the hardline Islamic regime ousted in a US-led campaign in late 2001.
He said four police vehicles were also damaged in the attack in Charchion district, one of the most troubled areas of the province.
"It was the work of the Taliban," Khan said.
Eighteen policemen were killed late Monday in Helmand, also an insurgency-hit province in the country's troubled south, in another attack blamed on the Taliban.
Meanwhile: US-led troops killed up to 10 suspected militants and wounded three civilians in an air strike in Afghanistan, Afghan and US military sources said Wednesday.
Another report adds: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Wednesday said US troops would stay in Afghanistan as long as needed, as Washington tries to bolster its influence in the region as an antidote to Islamic extremism.
In a meeting with President Hamid Karzai, whose government is fighting insurgents loyal to the hardline Islamic Taliban that were ousted from power here by a US-led war four years ago, Rice said the US goal was peace.
The country produces more than 80 percent of the world's opium, which is smuggled out and made into heroin, and the illegal crop contributes up to 60 percent of Afghanistan's economy.
Rice is on a three-day tour of Central Asian nations aimed at boosting US influence in the region, while firming up support for the US "war on terror" and pushing for democratic reform.
Afghanistan embarked on a process to democratise after the Taliban were toppled, with last month's parliamentary election -- the first in more than three decades -- a key step.
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