Death of Ten Afghan Police Officers by a 'Taliban Infiltrator'

On Tuesday, February 25, Afghan officials reported the death of ten police officers in the south of the country at the hands of a colleague who collaborated with the Taliban militants. According to AFP, this infiltrator poisoned his colleagues while they were not fully alert and then shot them. Officials in Urozgan province, where the incident occurred, told news agencies that the attacker fled the police station after stealing the weapons of his colleagues. In this context, Dost Mohammad Nayeb, a spokesperson for the Urozgan governorate, told the Afghan section of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that preliminary investigations indicate this infiltrator in the Afghan police received orders from anti-government forces and joined them after fleeing the scene. Rahimullah Khan, the deputy provincial police chief, also announced the initiation of operations to track down the suspect involved in this attack. Meanwhile, in a different statement, Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesperson for the Taliban in Afghanistan, claimed that nine Afghan police officers were killed following the capture of the Chenarto police station. This is not the first time a Taliban infiltrator has attacked the police or military forces in the country. In June of this year, during a Taliban attack on a military center in Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan, five Taliban members were killed, and nine Afghan police officers were injured. On January 17 of the previous year, in a similar attack, four Taliban infiltrators killed nine Afghan police officers in Urozgan.