Dozens killed amid Afghan peace push
Taliban suicide bombers killed at least 19 people in an attack on a government office on Saturday night, officials said, in the latest episode of violence in Afghanistan as peace talks continue to end the war.
Election workers were registering voters ahead of presidential elections in September at an office in the Maroof district of the southern Kandahar province when fighters of the hardline Islamist group launched an attack using four Humvee vehicles, officials said.
Eight election workers were killed, they said. Eleven Afghan security force members were also killed alongside the four suicide bombers, said Tadeen Khan, the police chief of Kandahar.
The Taliban, which rejects the election process, claimed responsibility for the attack.
Taliban spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi said the group’s fighters also killed 57 members of the Afghan security forces in the attack and captured 11 others, but Afghan officials disputed the account.
The interior ministry in a statement said 25 Taliban insurgents were killed in the clash.
The Taliban, which controls or contests half the country, more than at any time since being overthrown by the US invasion in 2001, has rejected calls for a ceasefire.
In a separate attack, Taliban fighters killed eight Afghan soldiers and injured eight others at a military checkpoint in Balabulak district in the western province of Farah, a local official said.
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