Five die in Afghanistan car ambush

Suspected Taliban insurgents ambushed an influential former governor in an Afghan city yesterday, shooting him dead along with his bodyguard and three others, police said.

Militants used AK-47 assault rifles to shoot at a car carrying the ex-governor, Taj Mohammed Qari Baba, near his home in eastern city of Ghazni, said Ali Ahmad, the chief of the provincial police force's criminal investigation department.

Two of the dead were relatives of the ex-governor and one was his driver, he said.

Baba was a powerful supporter of the government in Ghazni. He twice served as the province's governor -- between 1992 and 1995, and then in 2002, after the Taliban was ousted months earlier. Prior to that, he was a commander in the mujahidin fighting Soviet occupying forces in the 1980s.

Taliban critic

Baba, who was believed to have been in his 60s, was a vocal supporter of the US-backed government and a critic of the Taliban.

Two suspected insurgents were arrested near the site of the shooting and were being questioned, Ahmad said.

The killing is the latest of prominent Afghans who have been targeted by the Taliban for speaking out against them and comes amid a major resurgence in insurgent violence.

A week ago, a suicide car bomb hit the head of the upper house of the Afghan Parliament as he was traveling in the capital, Kabul, injuring him and killing four other people.

Several pro-government clerics have also been killed, many of them just days after condemning the rebel movement.

A statement attributed to Taliban leader Mullah Omar was issued on Thursday, warning of a wave of rebels attacks in coming months as snows melt on the high mountain passes the guerillas use.

Policemen killed

Meanwhile, a blast killed nine Afghan policemen as they were bringing back the bodies of four Macedonians kidnapped and killed by the Taliban and dumped in a valley, the Kandahar provincial governor said yesterday.

Governor Assadullah Khalid had said on Friday five policemen were killed after the bodies of the Macedonians were discovered hidden under brush and sticks in a valley near the border with Helmand Province.

"At first, the information we got was five policemen were killed and three wounded," Khalid said.

"But after the bodies were brought to Kandahar, we found that nine policemen had been killed," he said.

Several police vehicles were returning with the bodies when one was hit by a blast, apparently caused by a mine, he said. Three policemen were wounded.

The Taliban said that they kidnapped the Macedonians, who were working for a services company, on March 11.

A Taliban spokesman later said the four had been executed on the orders of Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar and their bodies dumped.

"These people had come to Afghanistan at America's behest, therefore they should be sentenced to death," Taliban spokesman Qari Mohammad Yousuf quoted the order as saying.

An official at the Ecolog cleaning contractor in Kabul said the Macedonians worked for the company.