Islamist ambushes kill 16 Afghan police

  
Training up Afghan forces is central to a new US strategy to end the war and draw down the number of foreign troops battling the Taliban in Afghanistan, but police struggle with a lack of resources and recruits.
  
Early Monday, militants ambushed a police post on a highway bisecting northeast Afghanistan from Kabul through Baghlan province, which is a main NATO supply route for troops fighting the Taliban insurgency.
  
"Eight police were killed in an attack on their post," Baghlan Governor Mohammad Akbar Barakzai told AFP.
  
Almost simultaneously, eight other officers lost their lives in a similar attack in the province of Helmand, the heartland of the Taliban revolt in the south, the interior ministry said in a statement.
  
"Sixteen policemen lost their lives in two separate attacks by the terrorists," the statement said.
  
"Eight police were martyred in a terrorist attack in the province of Baghlan... eight police were martyred in another terrorist attack in the province of Helmand," it said.
  
Less equipped and paid less than Afghan soldiers, policemen are frontline targets for insurgents fighting to topple the Western-backed government and expel the 113,000 NATO and US troops based in the country.
  
Barakzai blamed the first attack on Hezb-e-Islami, an Islamist militant group strong in northeastern regions such as Baghlan and neighbouring Kunduz province, where violence has steadily increased over the past two years.
  
A man claiming to speak for Hezb-e-Islami told AFP in a telephone call that his group had carried out the attack.
  
He said one of the group's fighters also died.
  
Hezb-e-Islami is led by former Afghan prime minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who is on the US most-wanted list of terror suspects.
  
Barakzai said the post had been set up recently to protect NATO supply convoys.
  
An increasing volume of supplies for NATO and US troops comes into landlocked Afghanistan from the north. The principal route through neighbouring Pakistan is frequently attacked by Taliban affiliates.
  
Afghanistan's insurgency, led by the Taliban but joined by other nebulous groups, is at its most virulent since the 2001 US-led invasion ousted the militia from power and brought President Hamid Karzai to power.
  
Faced with worsening violence, US President Barack Obama this month ordered an extra 30,000 American troops into the war in a bid to reverse the Taliban momentum, deny Al-Qaeda a safe heaven and train Afghan forces.
  
Karzai, who was sworn in for a second term last month following a fraud-hit election, has vowed to assume full responsibility for security in the country in the next five years.
  
But he says the impoverished country lacks the funds to foot the bill, telling visiting US Defence Secretary Robert Gates last week that Afghanistan would need aid to fund its security forces for up to 20 more years.
  
A senior NATO commander has put the number of police at 68,000, covering a vast, rural country with an estimated population of between 26 and 30 million.
  
And out of 94,000 soldiers trained so far, 10,000 have defected, according to the commander.
  
The United States hopes to increase the number of Afghan soldiers and police to 287,000 by July 2011 -- the target date to start withdrawing US soldiers -- but commanders have warned of the challenges involved in recruiting forces.
  
Nearly 500 foreign troops have died in Afghanistan this year, most of them Americans, making it the deadliest year for US forces in the country, according to the website icasualties.org.