Taliban attack in western Afghanistan kills at least 30 security forces

Afghan officials say the Taliban have killed 30 policemen in a blistering overnight attack in western Farah province.

Provincial council member Dadullah Qani said on Thursday that the onslaught on the police outpost in the province's district of Khaki Safed began late on Wednesday and continued for more than four hours.

In Kabul, lawmaker Samiullah Samim said the district police commander, Abdul Jabhar, was among those killed.

The Taliban managed to flee with a large amount of weapons and ammunition.

Samim says retaliatory airstrikes killed 17 Taliban fighters.

The Taliban have in recent months been staging near-daily attacks across Afghanistan, inflicting heavy casualties on Afghan forces. Authorities no longer regularly provide casualty figures but unofficial estimates say about 45 Afghan police or soldiers are killed or wounded daily.

The Taliban have ramped up attacks in strategic provinces in their battle to expel foreign forces, topple the Western-backed government and restore their version of hardline Islamic law.

The latest attack comes four days after the Taliban killed 50 police and soldiers at checkpoints in Farah city and nearby districts.

“Unfortunately, many of our men have lost their lives in Farah,” said Najib Danish, a spokesman for the interior ministry in Kabul, the capital.

Danish said more than 30 policemen had been killed since Wednesday and additional forces were being deployed.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the clashes in Farah, which are widely seen as forming part of their strategy to step up battlefield pressure while seeking a political settlement with the United States.

Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, a spokesman for the hardline militant group, said its fighters killed 35 security personnel, arrested two security officials, destroyed government vehicles and seized a large cache of weapons in Farah.

Khalilzad, an Afghan-born former U.S. ambassador to Kabul, met President Ashraf Ghani and other officials at the weekend, in his latest round of meetings following an initial meeting last month with Taliban officials in Qatar.

The government no longer releases precise casualty figures, but officials say at least 500 men are being killed every month and hundreds more wounded, a tally many consider an underestimate.