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KANDAHAR, Feb 4 (AFP): A district governor and two policemen were killed by Taliban rebels fleeing a battle that left 25 dead in Afghanistan, while a bomb killed two civilians Saturday, an official said.
A Taliban commander was meanwhile killed in a clash late Friday with police on the border with Pakistan, police said.
Taliban rebels retreating from a clash with police in southern Helmand province's Sangin district attacked the district headquarters in nearby Musa Qala late Friday, provincial deputy governor Amir Mohammad Akhundzada said.
The militants killed district chief Abdul Qodus and one of his police guards, he said.
They also killed a policeman as they stormed through adjoining Nawzad district, he said.
The fierce battle in Sangin Friday left around 20 Taliban fighters and five policemen dead, he said. Police were scouring several villages in the area for the militants.
"The fighting is ongoing. There are new reinforcements in all of these areas," Akhundzada said.
Planes from the US-led coalition helping to hunt down Taliban and other militants bombed the Sangin area in support of Afghan security forces Friday, US military spokesman Lieutenant Mike Cody said.
A purported Taliban spokesman, Qari Mohammad Yousuf, confirmed the fighting in Helmand but said the clashes in Nawzad and Musa Qala did not involve fleeing rebels Sangin, but rather reinforcements on their way to assist them.
The battle is the biggest between security forces and remnants of the ousted Taliban in several months, with the rebels more often resorting to targeted, Iraqi-style suicide blasts and car bombings in recent months.
A remotely detonated roadside bomb killed two people and wounded three others Saturday in a bazaar on the edges of the southern capital of Kandahar, said a police official who did not want to be identified.
He blamed the attacks on remnants of the Taliban. A Taliban spokesman claimed responsbility for the bomb blast.
And Taliban commander Mullah Samad, who had been leading dozens of men operating in villages around the town of Spin Boldak in Kandahar province on the border with Pakistan, was killed in fighting with police late Friday, a senior police official said on condition of anonymity.
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