17 Afghan officers killed in overnight Taliban attack on police base

center of the strategically important district of Musa Qala, the officials said. Local police officers and witnesses described a largescale attack that began after midnight and continued until daylight.

“There are also casualties to the Taliban, but we do not know the figures,” said Omar Zwak, the spokesman for the governor of Helmand province. “We are investigating how this happened. Why didn’t the district center headquarters send reinforcements? It’s a big loss. We are saddened.”

Of the 19 police officers stationed at the base, 17 were killed and the remaining two were wound-

ed, he said. Police Taliban target

One police officer, stationed at a base near the one that came under attack, said the insurgents surrounded it and by dawn had completely destroyed it. Roads around the base, known as the Takhtapol base, were planted with mines and booby traps, preventing its defenders from escaping and other officers from coming to their aid, the officer stationed at the nearby base said.

Musa Qala, in Helmand’s north, adjoins the district of Baghran, which the Taliban already control, according to Maj. Gen. Mohammad Afzal Aman, chief of operations for the Ministry of Defense. Officers assigned to fight the Taliban in Baghran were stationed at the Takhtapol base, which is less than a mile from the district headquarters in Musa Qala.

Afghanistan’s poorly trained and ill-equipped national police force has borne the brunt of the fighting, and the casualties, in Helmand, as in many other parts of the country. Of the 5,588 Afghan government security forces killed last year, 3,720 of them were police officers — twice the number of regular soldiers killed.

On May 25, 20 police officers were killed in Taliban attacks in Helmand. In April, the police chief in southern Uruzgan province was killed, just six weeks after his predecessor met a similar fate.

“We do not have modern weapons to fight the Taliban and have no aircraft to target them,” said a police officer from Musa Qala, who, like others interviewed, spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to make statements to the news media. “When we learned that Taliban ambushed the police base, we cannot assist them, due to fears of ambush or IEDs,” the officer said, referring to improvised explosive devices. Less support from U.S.

Musa Qala district itself nearly fell to the Taliban last year, but the insurgents were turned back, in part by air support from the American-led coalition.

Aman said at a news conference on Saturday in Kabul that the Taliban now controlled four of Afghanistan’s more than 300 districts, including two in Helmand.

The other Helmand district they control is Dishu, in the far south of the province, the general said.

The other two Talibancontrolled districts are the Khak-e Afghan District in Zabul province and the Nawa District in Ghazni province, Aman said.

“No other area except those four districts is under the enemy control now,” he said. Last week the insurgents overran the Yamgan District in northern Badakhshan province, but Aman said that it was now back in government control.

Lt. Gen. Mohammad Dawran, the commander of the Afghan Air Force, acknowledged Saturday that a lack of air support since the U.S.-led combat mission ended last year posed a problem for the country’s security forces.

A much smaller number of American and allied troops remain in Afghanistan, mainly for training, advising and counterterrorism operations. U.S. warplanes no longer routinely carry out close air support for Afghan units.

“We really have serious problems in this area,” Dawran said.

“The president sees and follows this in the national security council himself and works on how we can find a better solution for this problem,” he said, re-