14 Afghan forces dead in separate attacks

KABUL: Fourteen Afghan security forces have been killed in separate attacks in southern and central Afghanistan, officials said on Tuesday.

Eight Afghan security guards from the largest US military base in Afghanistan, Bagram Airbase, were killed when their vehicle was attacked late on Monday night, Bagram’s district governor Abdul Shokoor Qudosi said, adding that “two others were wounded.”

The incident took place on the main road near the village of ShahKah, approximately one km from the base, Qudosi said. The group of 10 guards was on its way to work at the time of the shooting.

Taliban in a message to media via Whatsapp claimed the attack saying they killed ten men.

Only hours later in Bagram, Afghan security forces arrested a16-year-old boy who intended to carry out a suicide attack near Bagram Airbase in the early morning hours, Abdul Shokor Qudosi, said.

The boy, who according to Qudosi wore a suicide vest, had positioned himself near a gate to the airbase intending to target a foreign convoy.

He was identified with the help of local people and arrested by police, Qudosi added.

Bagram Airbase is a regular target of attacks. In November, a suicide bomb blast inside the base left two US service members and two contractors dead, and injured 16 others.

In a separate incident, six highway police were killed when their vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan’s embattled southern Helmand province on Tuesday afternoon.

“They were on a routine patrol on the Kandahar-Helmand highway when the bomb hit their vehicle,” said Haji Abdul Ahad Sultanzoy, a Helmand provincial council member. YANGON: Chinese banks have frozen the accounts of more than 100 commodities traders in northeast Myanmar in a bid to clamp down on smuggling and illegal gambling, state media reported Tuesday.

Myanmar’s government has been negotiating with Chinese officials since the accounts were suspended last week by three banks based in China’s Yunnan province.