Taliban ambush Afghan police, 14 dead

KABUL, May 23 (Reuters) Taliban guerrillas attacked a convoy of provincial officials and police in southern Afghanistan and 11 Taliban and three policemen were killed, the government said today.

In a separate incident, four Afghan aid workers were killed in a roadside blast west of Kabul, police said.

The attacks come after several days of some of the heaviest Taliban attacks since they were ousted in 2001 and just as NATO is bringing thousands of extra troops into the country.

More than 250 people have been killed since last Wednesday - more than the number reported killed in Iraq during the same period - according to figures from the US military and Afghan authorities.

Most of the dead were militants but dozens of Afghan police, soldiers and civilians have also been killed, along with four foreign soldiers.

The government convoy, which included the provincial police chief, was travelling in the north of Helmand when it came under attack late on Monday, a provincial official said.

''Three policemen were martyred and six were wounded,'' said Interior Ministry spokesman Yousuf Stanizai. Eleven Talbian were killed in subsequent fighting, his ministry said.

A Taliban spokesman, Qari Mohammad Yousuf, claimed responsibility for the attack and said there were no Taliban casualties.

The chief of police in Maidan-Wardak province, Subhan Qul, said four Afghan aid workers, one of them a woman, were killed when a roadside bomb hit their vehicle yesterday.

An official at an agency overseeing security for aid workers in Afghanistan said he had heard that a civilian car had been hit by a bomb or mine in the province just west of Kabul, but he had yet to confirm details of the attack.

The Taliban, fighting to expel foreign forces and defeat the Western-backed government, have attacked and killed aid workers in the past, accusing them of supporting the government.

Nearly five years after they were forced from power by US and Afghan forces, the Taliban appear better organised and more aggressive than at any time since their ouster.

The militants have not managed to capture and hold territory but ever larger swathes of the countryside are off limits to government and aid workers at a time the government should be pushing its authority and development work into rural areas.

The violence is also disastrous for Afghan efforts to attract investment, economists say.

President Hamid Karzai invited investors from the United Arab Emirates to come to his country, in a speech there on Monday, as news was emerging from southern Afghanistan of scores killed in fighting.

REUTERS SHR PM1814