At least 12 Afghan security forces killed in suicide attack: police

AFP
NATO soldiers keep watch near the wreckage of their vehicle at the site of a Taliban suicide attack in Kandahar on September 15, 2017. A suicide attacker driving an explosives-filled vehicle slammed into a convoy of foreign forces in southern Afghanistan on September 15, officials said, with reports of several soldiers wounded. The Taliban claimed the attack which Kandahar provincial governor spokesman Fazal Bari Baryalai told AFP "totally destroyed" one of the vehicles carrying Romanian soldiers in Daman district. Afghan and NATO officials could not confirm reports of casualties but in a WhatsApp message to journalists Taliban spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi said "seven invading forces" were killed. (AFP)

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan: At least a dozen Afghan security forces were killed when a suicide attacker driving an explosives-packed Humvee blew himself up in the southern province of Kandahar, police said Thursday.
The Taliban claimed the deadly assault on the government and police headquarters in Maroof district that also wounded several others.
“Twelve security forces were killed and four others were wounded,” Kandahar police spokesman Zia Durrani told AFP.
Durrani said the Taliban attackers had been “defeated.”
A border police commander in Maroof, which borders Pakistan, gave a slightly higher toll, telling AFP that 14 security personnel had been killed and eight wounded in the attack that happened late Wednesday.
“The intensity of the blast caused damage to the building and led to casualties,” he said.
“The clean-up operation is under way in the area.”
The attack is the latest deadly assault by the Taliban, which has been on the offensive since US-led NATO combat troops withdrew in 2014 and now controls swathes of territory across the country.
During a high-profile visit by US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg to the Afghan capital Kabul on Wednesday, insurgents launched a volley of rockets near the city’s international airport.
A US airstrike launched in support of Afghan security forces who had confronted the attackers caused “several casualties” when a missile malfunctioned.
One person was killed and 11 others wounded in the assault that lasted several hours, according to the interior ministry.