KABUL (AFP) — A NATO soldier and an Afghan policeman were killed in a row that erupted after a bomb strike in Afghanistan, the alliance force said Monday, as eight Afghans died in new insurgency-linked attacks.
The police and International Security Assistance Force soldiers were struck by the bomb while on a joint patrol in eastern Afghanistan Sunday, ISAF said.
Seven civilians were arrested afterwards when they tested positive for explosive residue, it said in a statement. They were taken to an Afghan National Police (ANP) station in Paktia province where the row erupted.
"While at the district centre, there was an altercation during which an ANP officer and one ISAF soldier were killed," it said, giving no details.
Afghan media reports said the policeman had shot dead a US soldier and wounded two others and was then shot dead himself.
The 40-nation force, which had announced the death of its soldier earlier without giving details, does not release the nationalities of its casualties.
The latest casualty brings the number of foreign soldiers killed in Afghanistan this year to at least 218, according to an AFP tally, with no official figure released from a single authority. Nearly 220 died last year.
In another attack, gunmen opened fire on the head of a provincial council, similar to a provincial parliament, near his home in the southern city of Kandahar late Sunday, a governor told AFP.
Mohammad Hashim Granai, chief of the Zabul provincial council, survived the attack on his vehicle, but four of his bodyguards were killed, Zabul governor Delbar Jan Arman told AFP. "Luckily he was not hurt," he said.
In rural eastern Paktika province meanwhile a bomb struck a vehicle Monday killed two civilians and wounding two others, police said.
And Taliban attacked a police outpost in Ghazni province overnight and killed two policemen, taking one away with them, an official said.
International forces also bombed a Taliban group in Ghazni and killed five rebels, a district governor told AFP.
The hardline Islamist Taliban were in government between 1996 and 2001, when they were removed in a US-led invasion.
Their campaign against the new government has grown year on year, with attacks increasingly sophisticated.
On Sunday the most high-profile woman police officer in Afghanistan was gunned down as she was leaving for work in the southern city of Kandahar.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the murder of the policewoman, Malalai Kakar, which was widely condemned, including by President Hamid Karzai and Interpol.
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