U.s.-backed Afghan police among 17 killed

KABUL, Afghanistan — Ten members of a rural Afghan paramilitary force and seven other people were drugged and killed at an outpost in a volatile eastern province, officials said Wednesday.

The killings occurred overnight in a remote district of Ghazni province, where villagers last year took up arms against the Taliban. Members of the Afghan Local Police, a U.S.-backed rural force made up of village recruits, were poisoned during dinner by a fellow officer who officials said had ties to the Taliban. The victims were then fatally shot by insurgents who overran the outpost, officials said.

Thosekilled along with the local police officers were friends and relatives who were spending the night at the outpost to help provide security, provincial Gov. Musa Khan Akbarzada said.

“It was a harrowing incident,” Akbarzada said.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the killings but denied the reports of poisoning. It was at least the fourth such poisoning of government security forces since October, according to the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office, which tracks security developments across the country.

The killings took place in Andar district, where villagers made headlines last summer for an apparently spontaneous uprising against harsh Taliban rule. Many of the civilians who took up arms have been folded into the Afghan Local Police, which U.S. officials plan to expand nationwide to 45,000 members from 20,000 in the coming years.