Bomb kills 9 Afghan policemen in convoy

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN — A roadside bomb targeting a police convoy killed nine officers and critically wounded one Monday in western Afghanistan, officials said.

The police were traveling in the Bakwa district of Farah province, provincial police spokesman Baryalai Khan said. The Bakwa police district commander was among the nine killed.

One of the three vehicles in the convoy was destroyed, Interior Ministry spokesman Zemeri Bashary said.

Western Afghanistan has been spared much of the violence rocking the south and east, but the area lies along a major heroin smuggling route into Iran. It also adjoins the volatile southern province of Helmand, where the North Atlantic Treaty Organization last week launched its largest offensive yet.

Last month, suspected Taliban militants briefly took over Bakwa a day after a roadside bomb attack on the province’s police chief as he was returning from destroying poppy fields.

The police chief was unharmed, but four officers in the vehicle were killed.

Afghanistan is the world’s largest grower of opium poppy. In 2006, production in the country rose 49% to 6,700 tons -- enough to make about 670 tons of heroin.

The government stepped up its poppy eradication efforts after rejecting the U.S. idea of spraying the crop.

Meanwhile, in Helmand’s Gereshk district, U.S.-led coalition and Afghan troops clashed with suspected Taliban insurgents Monday, the coalition said. It said two militants were killed and two Afghan troops and one coalition soldier were slightly wounded.

The coalition and Afghan troops had been targeting an alleged antiaircraft weapons trafficker in a compound, but the coalition did not provide further details about the suspect.

A local leader in Gereshk, Adil Khan, said the assault killed five civilians and wounded four, including three children.

The coalition said there were “no reported civilian casualties.”