AFGHANISTAN - July 10 - 10 Policemen Beheaded, Officials Say.

The government officials say 10 Afghan border police officers are killed in a clash with Taliban fighters in the country's south, and all are believed to have been beheaded. The killings took place July 7 afternoon, when border police forces came under attack in Helmand Province, roughly 650kms, south of Kabul, and were unable to flee because their vehicle got bogged down in sand, said the Afghan interior minister Ali Ahmad Jalali. Four of the officers were killed immediately, Jalali said, and six others were killed later and left 200 meters, or 660 feet, from the Pakistani border. The attackers then fled across the border, he said. Haji Hayatullah, an aide to the governor of Helmand, said July 10 that all 10 officers had been beheaded. There was no further information on the Taliban claim, made July 9, that they had left the beheaded corpse of a members of the US Navy Seals in northeastern Kunar Province. American forces have been searching the region for the commando, who disappeared after a clash with Taliban fighters on June 28. A US military spokeswoman, Lieutenant Cindy Moore, said she had no information to confirm the Taliban claim, or that the missing commando had been captured, and she said a search for him was continuing. "We are always hopeful", she said, according to Reuters. The attack on the border police comes at a time of escalating violence by suspected Taliban forces. The Afghan defense minister, General Abdur Rahim Wardak, said July 10 that the evidence pointed to "coordination between Taliban and Al Qaeda" forces, but he rejected the possibility that Osama bin Laden could be hiding in Afghanistan. "Most probably Bin Laden is on the Pakistani side of the border", he said. Pres Hamid Karzai, likewise, said July 8 that Afghanistan did not harbour bin Laden. Pakistan on July 10 refuted the claim that Al Qaeda was in the country. "They could be anywhere in the world, including Afghanistan", said a FM spokesman, Jalil Abbas Jilani, according to news reports. Thirteen pro-government Afghan militia members were killed and two were wounded on July 10 -when their truck hit an anti-tank mine in south-eastern Afghanistan during a mission to disarm villagers holding illegal weapons, the police said, according to Reuters reports from the town of Khost. The blast happened as the men were on their way to a remote village in the Jani Khel district of Paktia, a province that borders Pakistan, said a senior provincial police official, Ghulam Rasool Salim. He added that the blast appeared to have been caused by an old anti-tank mine, making it unlikely that it was an attack by the Taliban or other militants. But villagers questioned this, saying that the road was frequently used and that they believed the mine was newly placed. The government announced July 7 the completion of a two-year drive to disarm tens of thousands of factional militia members, but it said it would continue the collection of weapons from illegal armed groups.