Taliban Attack Kills Nine

Taliban militiamen killed a district police chief and eight Afghan soldiers in an ambush in a southern province, a senior official said Thursday.

The assailants fired AK-47 assault rifles and heavy machine guns at a pair of four-wheel-drive vehicles carrying Yar Mohammed, police chief of Mizan district in Zabul province, and the soldiers around 10 a.m. on Wednesday. There were no survivors.

Zabul Gov. Khyal Mohammed said one of the attackers had been killed when the soldiers fired back during the ambush. Authorities had retrieved the body.

In a phone call to a reporter, Abdul Hakim Latifi, who purports to speak for the Taliban, claimed responsibility for the attack and gave the name of the police chief who was killed.

"We did this attack," Latifi said. He claimed that 18 Afghan soldiers were killed as well as Mohammed.

Guerrillas of the former ruling Taliban regime ousted by U.S.-led forces in late 2001 are active in Zabul and in other regions of southern and eastern Afghanistan, and have waged frequent attacks on targets of the U.S.-backed Afghan government over the past year.

Meanwhile, in neighboring Paktika province, U.S. forces on Wednesday night opened fire on a car that failed to stop at a road checkpoint, injuring four Afghan civilians, a senior Afghan official said.

Paktika Gov. Gulab Khan Mungle said a U.S. commander was "very sad" over the incident, and the four injured had been taken to Bagram air base north of the capital Kabul for medical treatment.

Some 13,000 U.S.-led forces are in Afghanistan to hunt for Taliban and al Qaeda rebels in the south and east.

Command of that mission changed hands Thursday, with the Hawaii-based 25th Infantry Division taking the reins during a ceremony at Bagram Air Base, the main coalition base north of the capital.

The division takes over from the Fort Drum, New York-based 10th Mountain Division, which had been the lead element in the coalition since May 2003.

The top American commander in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. David Barno, said the American military's commitment to Afghanistan would not waiver, and he noted that 30 American and other coalition soldiers had been killed in Afghanistan in the past year.

"No one should underestimate the sacrifice of these brave men and women who answered duty's call to deploy to this remote part of the world to help a people in need," Barno said.

The military is engaged in stepped up efforts to catch al Qaeda and Taliban fugitives. Osama bin Laden and his right-hand man, Ayman al-Zawahri, are both still at large, believed hiding in the rugged mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The military recently backed off predictions it would capture bin Laden this year. In a tape this week, a voice purported to be bin Laden's offers a truce to European countries that withdraw troops from Islamic areas.

Troops are also trying to improve security ahead of historic presidential and parliamentary elections in September.

The presidential and parliamentary election was scheduled for June but has been pushed back because of continued lawlessness and delays in registering voters, particularly in the volatile south and east of the country.

Some 1.8 million of Afghanistan's 10.5 million eligible voters have so far registered to vote, most in provincial capitals in relatively stable parts of the country, according to U.N. spokesman David Singh.

Singh said that only 29 percent of the voters registered so far are women, but that the world body was hoping that number would increase.

U.N. and Afghan officials plan to open registration centers across the country in May — including in the problem areas. The government, the U.S. military and NATO-led peacekeepers are to provide security for the registration.

The government has also pledged to demobilize 40,000 militia fighters to help prevent voter intimidation by feuding warlords who still control large parts of the countryside. Last week, one warlord's forces overran the capital of a remote province.

Two planeloads filled with election material arrived on Thursday ahead of a stepped-up drive to register people for the vote.

U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai is expected to win the vote, seen as a key step on Afghanistan's transition to democracy after more than two decades of conflict.