Taliban behead Afghan officer*

POSTED: 1122 GMT (1922 HKT), April 23, 2007

Story Highlights
• Taliban operatives beheaded an Afghan intelligence officer
• Six intelligence officers were killed, three injured in a bomb attack
on a vehicle
• Two policeman were killed in a roadside bomb attack in the south
• NATO, Afghan troops continue largest-ever offensive launched last month

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Assailants abducted and beheaded an Afghan
intelligence service employee and struck one of the agency's vehicles
with a remote-controlled bomb in a separate attack, killing six
employees and wounding three, officials said Monday.

Another roadside bomb attack in the south killed two policemen, while a
large car bomb was found and defused in the capital, Kabul. On Monday,
in Laghman province's Alingar district, an intelligence service vehicle
driving from neighboring Nuristan province was hit by a
remote-controlled bomb, said provincial police chief Abdul Karim.

He said six of the agency's workers were killed, while three others were
wounded. An intelligence service vehicle was also bombed in the same
province on Sunday, in an attack that killed two intelligence service
officers, a soldier and a driver in the provincial capital Mehtar Lam.

In Ghazni province, southwest of Kabul, an intelligence service employee
was invited into a home, then kidnapped and beheaded Sunday by the
Taliban, said deputy governor Mohammad Kazim Allayar. He said the owner
of the house is currently under investigation.

In southern Zabul province, a roadside bomb hit police Monday as they
were patrolling in Shamulzayi district, killing two policemen and
wounding five others, said district chief Wazir Mohammad Khan.

Intelligence officers in Kabul discovered a large car bomb Monday in a
battered, old taxi parked in a crowded civilian area where NATO and U.S.
convoys often drive past. Authorities found inside the car a tank of
gasoline, three gallons of explosive chemicals, three grenades and a
mortar, an official said on condition of anonymity because of the
agency's policy.

"Fortunately the intelligence service discovered it, otherwise it would
have caused an enormous calamity in the area," the official said.

There have been at least three suicide bomb attacks in Kabul this year,
but the areas worst plagued by violence are the southern and eastern
provinces. There have been 39 suicide attacks in the first three months
of 2007, a threefold increase compared to the same period last year,
according to the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office.

On Saturday, a suicide bomber blew himself up in the eastern city of
Khost, killing six civilians and wounding 40 others, officials said.

NATO and Afghan troops, meanwhile, pressed ahead with their largest-ever
offensive launched last month in southern Afghanistan to flush out
Taliban militants from the northern tip of opium-producing Helmand
province.