KABUL, Afghanistan - Suicide bombers attacked a training area for a new U.S.-backed village defence force on Thursday -- one of three such attacks across Afghanistan that killed and wounded policemen and civilians.
Four suicide attackers stormed the defence force training area in the east, killing two trainees and a member of the Afghan National Police, officials said.
The bombers approached an area where about 50 men were being trained for the Afghan Local Police -- a village-level fighting force being developed across the country to counter the Taliban insurgency, said Azad Khan, the top official in Jaji district of Paktia province.
Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, has referred to the new force as a "night watch with AK-47s."
One attacker blew himself up at the entrance to the training area, one was gunned down by security forces protecting the area and two attackers escaped into the mountainous terrain, the Interior Ministry said.
The Taliban, which claimed responsibility for the 8 a.m. attack, said the suicide bomber who detonated his explosive vest was an insurgent from Khost who had infiltrated the national police force.
Zakria, a doctor in the local hospital who goes by one name, confirmed the three deaths and said two other national policemen were injured in the attack.
President Hamid Karzai condemned the deadly violence in Paktia and two other attacks in Kabul and Kandahar provinces.
"The enemy of Afghanistan once again has conducted terrorist acts against the people of Afghanistan under the name of the Islam faith," he said in a statement.
A suicide car bomber detonated a truck of explosives covered in wood at a government compound in Musayi district, about 65 kilometres south of the Afghan capital, according Daud Amin, deputy police chief in Kabul. Six members of the Afghan national security forces were injured, he said.
In Kandahar city, a Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan, a suicide bomber waiting along a road for government officials to pass, blew himself up, injuring two women and one Afghan policemen, police said. No government officials were injured.
