Militants kill 11 in Afghanistan
(AP)
Updated: 2005-10-12 17:17

Militants killed six police and five medical workers in separate attacks in southern Afghanistan, and President Hamid Karzai said Wednesday he believes the rebels are receiving support from the nation's booming drug trade.

The police were killed by suspected Taliban rebels who ambushed their convoy in mountains in Uruzgan province Tuesday, the second major attack on the fledgling force in two days, local Gov. Jan Mohammed Khan said.

One officer was still missing after the attack and feared dead, and four police vehicles were destroyed. Reinforcements have been rushed to the area "to hunt down the Taliban," Khan said.

The attack on the medical workers happened Wednesday near Kandahar city, a former Taliban stronghold, said doctor Abdul Qadir, director of the U.N.-sponsored Afghan Help Development Services, a local aid group that employed the five.

Gunmen opened fire on their vehicle as they drove through the desert. Two of the five dead were doctors. Three other medical workers in the vehicle were wounded, Qadir said. The eight were returning to Kandahar after treating refugees in a nearby camp.

Karzai made his comments about the violence in a press conference with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

When asked about an attack on police in southern Helmand province Tuesday that left at least 19 officers dead, he said there was "cooperation between the drug trade and terrorism." He said the region was well known as a center for trafficking opium and heroin.

Afghanistan produces an estimated 87 percent of the world's supply of both the drugs, sparking warnings the country is becoming a "narco-state" four years after a U.S.-led invasion drove the Taliban from power.

"We will have terrorism attacking (us) ... for quite some time," he warned.

Karzai's U.S.-backed government is struggling to strengthen Afghanistan's fragile democracy while dealing with a stubborn rebellion that has left about 1,400 dead in the past half-year.

Rice said the 21,000-strong U.S.-led coalition was doing its best to quash the insurgency.

"We are doing everything we can to defeat the terrorists. We can not simply defend ourselves, we have to be on the offensive," she said.

There had been hopes that the U.S. military may have been able to reduce its number of troops here next year as a separate NATO-led peacekeeping force takes responsibility for security in volatile regions.

But Rice said U.S. forces will remain "for as long as they are needed in whatever numbers they are needed to make certain that they defeat the terrorists and Afghanistan becomes a place of stability and progress."