Afghan police, rebels killed as UN reviews Taliban blacklist

KABUL - Three police officers were killed Saturday in a Taliban ambush in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar, where nine insurgents were killed earlier in an Afghan-NATO operation, officials said.

Meanwhile, the top United Nations envoy to Afghanistan, Staffan de Mistura, said Saturday that a UN Security Council team has come to Kabul to review the names of Taliban and Al Qaeda suspects on its sanctions list.

The team is expected to update the list and submit recommendations to the Security Council by the end of this month on whether names should be added or removed, de Mistura told journalists in Kabul.

“Updating means taking on or taking off names based on additional new information,” he said, adding: “Some of the people in the list may not be alive any more. The list may be completely outdated.”

The team arrived in Kabul more than a week after some 1,600 delegates from across Afghanistan, meeting in an assembly, called on the Afghan government and the international community to remove

Taliban leaders from the blacklist.

The delegates said that such a move would pave the way for peace talks between the Taliban and the Western-backed Afghan government.

The assembly, known as a peace jirga, also urged the Afghan government to release those Taliban suspects who have been jailed based on “inaccurate information or unsubstantiated allegations.”

The Taliban has rejected recommendations by the peace jirga and further intensified attacks on Afghan and more than 120,000 NATO forces currently based in the country.

On Saturday, three police officers were killed when Taliban militants attacked their vehicle in the Khakrez district of Kandahar, Zalmai Ayoubi, spokesman for the provincial governor said.

Separately, Afghan forces backed by NATO troops killed nine suspected insurgents in a joint operation in Kandahar’s Shah Walikot district, Ayoubi said.

Kandahar, the birthplace and the spiritual home for Taliban, has witnessed increased insurgent attacks in recent weeks. The escalation comes ahead of a planned operation by Afghan and NATO forces.

Nine Afghan civilians were killed in a roadside bomb blast in the province Friday, while a suicide attacker targeted a wedding party in Kandahar’s Arghandab district Wednesday night.

Provincial police chief Sher Mohammad Zazai said Saturday that the death toll jumped to 56 civilians killed, while dozens more were injured. Initial reports had put the death toll for the attack at 40.

On Saturday, President Hamid Karzai summoned his senior security chiefs and the top NATO commander in the country, General Stanley McChrystal, to reviews plans for the upcoming operation in Kandahar.

The much publicised offensive was initially set to begin by summer, when thousands of extra US troops arrive in the region. But McChrystal said in Brussels Thursday that it was proving hard to

convince local civilians that the thrust will work.

“It’s my personal assessment that (the operation) will be more deliberate than we probably communicated … It’s more important we get it right than we get it fast,” he said.