Taliban hit Helmand checkpoints, kill 25 police over two-day stretch

Taliban militants overran several checkpoints in southern Helmand province and killed at least 25 police officers over the past two days, officials said Monday, in the first major assaults in the province since the insurgents named a new leader last week.

While the Taliban made major inroads in Helmand last year, the violence had seemed relatively contained in recent months, after broad changes by the Afghan Army there and a new influx of U.S. troops and advisers.

But the fighting has once again intensified, with an increased tempo of attacks in the districts of Nad Ali, Gereshk, Sangin and Marja, as well as in Babaji, a suburb of the provincial capital Lashkar Gah.

Gul Agha, a commander of Afghan Local Police militia forces in Gereshk District, said Taliban fighters overran five checkpoints in the district bordering the provincial capital and killed 12 fighters and executed their unit commander.

“A local commander named Safar Muhammad Akka was dragged and hanged in Yakhchal area of Gereshk by Taliban,” Agha said.

“He was an old man, but very anti-Taliban,” he said.

A regional police commander, Esmatullah Dawlatzai, put the death toll at 25 members of the national police and Afghan Local Police militia fighters, with an additional 15 wounded, across three districts over the past two days.

But the head of the Helmand provincial council, Abdul Karim Attal, said Monday that as many as 35 to 40 officers were killed or wounded in the past 24 hours of fighting across several districts.

After their supreme leader was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan, the Taliban announced the promotion of his deputy, Mawlawi Haibatullah Akhundzada, as their new leader Wednesday.