A district deputy governor, three of his guards and a policeman were killed in two Taliban attacks in Afghanistan on Sunday, while two militants died when a bomb exploded prematurely, officials said. The deputy chief of Musa Khel district in the eastern province of Khost was ambushed while travelling to the provincial capital, Khost governor Arsala Jamal told AFP.

The official, Mirzajan Nimgari, and his three bodyguards were killed, he said. Jamal blamed the attack on the Taliban who launched an insurgency after being driven from government in a United States-led invasion in late 2001.

In the provincial capital, a bomb exploded under a bridge about 50 metres from a regional United Nations office, provincial spokesman Khaibar Pashtun said. Authorities were investigating to determine whether the man wounded was in fact the person who triggered the device, he said.

Taliban fighters separately ambushed a police patrol in the southern province of Uruzgan in the early hours of the morning, killing one policeman and wounding two others, provincial police chief Juma Gul Hemat said. Two Taliban were meanwhile killed in the southern province of Helmand when a mine they were planting into a road exploded prematurely, provincial police chief Mohammad Hussein Andiwal said.

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