KABUL (AFP) — Around 500 Afghan policemen have been killed in growing violence linked to Taliban attacks and anti-opium efforts in the past five months, the government said.
Interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary described the death rate for the fledgling force as "very high" but could not provide figures from last year for comparison.
"About 500 policemen have died this year," he told reporters Monday, referring to the Afghan year, which starts March 21.
"They were martyred not only providing security but also in fighting insurgents, participating in poppy eradication activities as well as fighting drug traffickers," he said.
Most of the deaths were in the country's south and east where Taliban insurgents are most active and poppy cultivation is at its highest, he told AFP after the media briefing.
Afghanistan's internationally trained police force, which now numbers 70,000 out of a planned 82,000, is often on the frontline of the Taliban insurgency, taking on army-type duties.
In a report released last week, the independent International Crisis Group cited interior ministry figures that said nearly 630 policemen and officers were "killed in action" in the year to March 2007.
The high death rate was due in part "to the fact that ill-equipped and trained police are used inappropriately as a fighting force," the report said.
Many police were seen by insurgents as "vulnerable, badly equipped representatives of the government," it said.
Casualty figures for the Afghan army were much lower, the report said.
The United Nations annual survey on opium cultivation, also released last month, said 15 Afghan police personnel were killed this year taking part in the eradication of opium fields as part of a crackdown on drugs production.
Opium production shot up 34 percent this year, it said. Afghanistan's produces 93 percent of the world's opium, the raw ingredient of heroin.
The drugs trade is said to finance part of the Taliban insurgency, which has intensified this year and left around 4,000 people dead, most of them rebels.
Hundreds of civilians have also been killed as have more than 150 international soldiers, according to an AFP count.
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