Afghan blasts, shootings kill 14

Fourteen people, including 11 policemen, were killed in shootings and explosions across insurgency-plagued Afghanistan, authorities said Sunday.

A roadside bomb blast killed five policemen and two civilians in the Zhari district of southern Kandahar on Sunday, the interior ministry said in a statement. Two other police were injured, it said.

The ministry said the police were on patrol "inspecting the opium fields".

"Planting mines by the enemies of Afghanistan indicates that there is close link between drug traders and the terrorists," it said.

Afghanistan produces 90 percent of the world's illicit drug supplies from its poppy crops which the government has a policy of eradicating.

Another three policemen were killed and two wounded in a similar incident in central Wardak province, just south of the capital Kabul, the ministry said.

The ministry blamed the attacks on the "enemies of Afghanistan" -- a term authorities use to refer to the remnants of the Taliban, who are leading an insurgency after the 2001 US-led invasion ousted them from power.

On Saturday, three other policemen were killed and two wounded in a roadside bomb explosion in eastern Khost province near the border with Pakistan, said senior police official Sher Ahmad Kochi.

A senior civil servant was killed in Kandahar on Sunday in a drive-by shooting by gunmen speeding past on a motorbike, an official said.

About 70,000 foreign troops are stationed in Afghanistan, with the United States preparing to deploy an extra 21,000 troops as part of a sweeping new strategy to counter the increasingly deadly Taliban-led insurgency.