Suspected Taliban fighters assassinated a senior Afghan police officer, his three bodyguards and a female relative today, leaving only the woman's three-month-old baby alive.
Suspected Taliban also assassinated a district police chief in neighbouring Nimroz province, killing three of his bodyguards.
Three attackers were also killed, police said. The Taliban and other insurgent and criminal groups have been stepping up attacks on Afghan and foreign forces, plunging the country into its bloodiest period since the hardline Islamist Taliban were toppled in late 2001.
About 2,000 people, most of them militants but also including civilians, Afghan forces, aid workers and more than 90 foreign soldiers, have been killed in violence this year.
The violence involves a mixture of opposition to foreign and government forces, tribal wars, the illegal drugs trade and crime.
The insurgency is concentrated in the south and east, mostly in provinces bordering Pakistan, the Taliban's one-time backer. A British soldier was killed and another badly wounded in an attack by guerrillas in the southern province of Helmand, the main opium growing area, yesterday, Nato said in a statement.
He was the seventh British soldier killed in fighting in Helmand since the beginning of August, when Nato formally took over southern Afghanistan from US troops to allow Washington to scale back.