KABUL, Afghanistan - A roadside bomb targeting a police convoy killed nine officers, including a local commander, and left one critically wounded Monday in western Afghanistan, officials said.
The attack occurred in Farah province's Bakwa district, which was briefly taken over by Taliban militants last month. Western Afghanistan has been spared much of the violence rocking the south and east, but the area lies on a major heroin smuggling route into Iran.
The Bakwa district police commander was among the nine killed, said provincial police spokesman Baryalai Khan. One of the three vehicles in the convoy was destroyed, said Interior Ministry spokesman Zemerai Bashary.
Elsewhere in the same province, Taliban insurgents attacked a police post Sunday near the border with Iran, and the ensuing clash left two militants dead and one wounded, Bashary said.
The area around Bakwa also neighbors the volatile southern province of Helmand, where NATO last week launched its largest offensive yet, aimed at winning over a population long supportive of militant fighters.
In Helmand, U.S.-led coalition and Afghan troops targeting an alleged anti-aircraft weapons trafficker clashed with suspected Taliban insurgents Monday in Gereshk district, killing two militants and lightly wounding two Afghan troops and one coalition soldier, the coalition said.
A local leader in Gereshk, Adil Khan, said the assault killed five civilians and wounded four others, including three children. The coalition said there were "no reported civilian casualties."
In neighboring Kandahar province, Afghan troops arrested a "high-ranking suicide attack coordinator" in Panjwayi district, NATO's International Security Assistance Force said Monday.
Near-daily suicide bombings and insurgent attacks plague the lawless southern region, a former Taliban stronghold where the government wields little power.
Italy's government, meanwhile, said it has been in contact with the kidnappers of an Italian reporter in Afghanistan and had reason to believe he was alive.
Taliban insurgents claim they kidnapped Daniele Mastrogiacomo, a reporter with Italian daily La Repubblica, last week along with two Afghans who were traveling with him in Helmand.
Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema said Italian officials have made contact with the kidnappers mainly "through humanitarian channels." He stressed Rome was not negotiating but trying to "create conditions to agree on a release."
Afghan parliamentary speaker Yunus Qanooni said Monday that he had been told by Afghan diplomats that the Taliban had threatened to kill Mastrogiacomo unless the Italian government reviewed its policy toward Afghanistan.
Italy contributes some 1,800 troops to the NATO mission, and Premier Romano Prodi reiterated Sunday that the commitment would remain unchanged.
Qanooni, speaking at NATO headquarters in Brussels, also appealed for Pakistan to crack down on insurgents in the rugged border between the two countries.
"Afghans expect their neighbors, especially Pakistan to stop supporting terrorist activities and terrorist training camps and stop these people from infiltrating into the country," he said.
Although Pakistan has deployed 80,000 troops along the border, Afghan officials have frequently complained that their neighbor has not done enough to control Taliban insurgents.
