An Afghan district governor and five police were killed today in a Taliban ambush in the western province of Herat, the province's police chief said.
A Taliban spokesman said by telephone from an undisclosed location that Taliban fighters had carried out the attack.
An unusually warm winter has allowed the Taliban to continue attacks in the normally quieter cold months in Afghanistan, where violence reached its worst levels of the eight-year-old war last year despite a rising number of foreign troops.
The latest attack happened as the officials were driving in a vehicle on a road in the remote Chesht Sharif district of the province, the provincial police chief told Reuters by phone.
"The district chief, a senior district police officer and four other of his colleagues were killed in the ambush," Alizai said. One policeman was wounded, he said without giving further details.
Reuters