Policeman and cook poison colleagues at checkpoint and leave six dead

AN AFGHAN police officer and cook poisoned their colleagues at a checkpoint in an assault co-ordinated with rebel fighters which left six dead in the country’s south.

It was the latest in a string of attacks inside the Afghan army and police that are threatening to undermine both the partnership with international troops – which have been the target of many attacks – and the morale of Afghan forces, who have suffered equally heavy casualties from such strikes.

The police officer and the cook worked with outside insurgents in the assault, which hit police manning a checkpoint in the Gereskh district of Helmand province, the governor’s office said in a statement yesterday.

They poisoned two of the officers and then the militants attacked from outside, killing the remaining four officers, provincial spokesman Ahmad Zirak said. He did not say how the officers were poisoned. The police officer was captured as he fled, but the cook escaped and remains at large, Zirak added.

The insurgent gunmen escaped by motorcycle with weapons and ammunition, the governor’s statement said.

A recent surge in the number of insider attacks on coalition troops by Afghan soldiers or police, or insurgents disguised in their uniforms, has undermined public support for the war in the West.

So far this year, at least 52 foreign troops – about half of them Americans – have been killed in insider attacks. The Afghan government has not provided statistics on the number of its forces killed in insider attacks. However, US military statistics show at least 53 members of the Afghan security forces had been killed by the end of August.

Meanwhile, a Taleban attack elsewhere in Helmand killed two district community council members, while Taleban-fired rocket-propelled grenades destroyed a warehouse full of food destined for the main US base in Afghanistan.

Insurgents ambushed the council members while they were driving to a tribal meeting in the volatile Sangin district, the governor’s office said in its statement, adding that the attackers escaped and police are pursuing them.

The attack against the council members is a reminder of the other worrying trend in insurgent tactics this year – a shift towards more targeted killings of those affiliated with the government.

The United Nations has recorded a sharp increase in such killings in the first six months of 2012, compared with the same period of 2011.In the warehouse attack, insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades at a compound used by military contractor Supreme Group to store food and other supplies destined for Bagram Air Field, the main US base in the country.

A warehouse in the compound caught fire and burned through the night. “The local fire brigade attended the scene and brought the fire ­under control, but the warehouse itself and all contents were destroyed,” Victoria Frost, a spokeswoman for ­Supreme Group in Dubai, wrote in an e-mail.

She said no-one was injured and staff at the site did not have to evacuate.

The fire could still be seen burning yesterday morning, said Mohammad Asif, the deputy administrator for Bagram district, where the compound is located.

Frost did not say how much material was destroyed but she said it was “primarily food supplies”, adding that the company was working to make up the loss from other warehouses.