Taliban kills 3 in 'spring offensive'

KABUL, Afghanistan - The Associated Press

US soldiers search a village as the Taliban launches a spring offensive. AP photo

A remote-controlled roadside bomb killed three police officers in eastern Afghanistan today, an attack the Taliban claimed as the opening round of their “spring offensive.”

The bomb exploded in Ghazni province beneath a police convoy traveling to the district of Zana Khan to take part in a military operation against insurgents, Mohammad Ali Ahmadi, the province’s deputy governor, said. He said the blast destroyed the vehicle carrying Col. Mohammad Hussain, the deputy provincial police chief, killing him and two other officers. Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid claimed responsibility in an email sent to the media. He called the bombing the first attack in the spring offensive that Taliban’s leadership had announced on April 27, naming it after Khalid ibn al-Walid, a companion of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad who became a legendary Muslim military commander known as the “Drawn Sword of God.” The insurgents said their forces planned to infiltrate enemy ranks to conduct so-called insider attacks and target military and diplomatic sites with suicide bombers.