20 killed in Afghan unrest

A roadside bomb killed three private security guards yesterday while two policemen and 15 Taliban died in fighting overnight in fresh violence in Afghanistan, officials said.
Two guards were also injured by the bomb that struck their vehicle on a road in Zahiri district of Kandahar province, provincial police commander, Sayed Aqa Saqib told AFP.
Separately, nine Taliban rebels and a policeman were killed in intense fighting Friday night in Ghazni Province, a district administration official said.
The clashes in the remote, Taliban-dominated Giru district lasted several hours, official Mahboob-Ullah told AFP.
"The bodies of the enemy casualties have been recovered. One of our policemen was martyred," he said.
In another incident Friday night in eastern Paktika province Taliban rebels clashed with police in which six insurgents were killed and a policeman also died, the interior ministry said.
Two policemen were also injured in the clash in Khushamand district of the troubled province.
Ghazni, south of the capital Kabul is an insurgency-hit region, where Taliban have been holding 19 South Korean hostages since around mid last month.
The rebels have threatened to kill their captives unless the government free some of their jailed fighters in its prisons, a demand Kabul has strongly rejected.
The Koreans, from a Christian church aid group, were seized while driving through Ghazni to the main southern province of Kandahar, another rebel hotspot.
The Taliban has been waging a bloody insurgency, which has claimed thousands of lives, including civilians, international forces and their own fighters, since they were toppled from government in Afghanistan in late 2001.