Afghan violence kills 32

At least 32 people including a police commander and several Taliban militants were killed in a wave of violence across insurgency-plagued Afghanistan, officials said yesterday.
Much of the bloodshed was blamed on the Taliban movement, which was toppled in a US-led invasion in late 2001 following the 9/11 attacks on the United States.
A district police chief, his brother and two other colleagues were killed late Monday in a roadside bomb blast in the northern province of Baghlan, provincial head of police Abdul Rahman Sayedkhili told AFP.
He could not say who was behind the blast, which happened near the home of the targeted policeman, named as Abdul Adil.
In a separate incident on Monday, a local guard from the US-owned security company USPI was killed after Taliban insurgents attacked a civilian convoy in the western province of Farah, police said.
Twenty Taliban fighters were also killed in a lengthy gunbattle after the ambush, Farah police chief Abdul Rahman Sarjang said. The militant death toll could not be independently confirmed.
A roadside blast in the same province on Monday claimed the lives of two Spanish soldiers and an Iranian interpreter. Six Spanish soldiers were also wounded in the attack on their convoy.