Taliban kill 3 Afghan police in attack on checkpoint

Taliban insurgents attacked a checkpoint in western Afghanistan early Saturday, killing at least three police and wounding four others, officials said.
Toryalai Abdyani, the police chief of Farah province, said the attackers killed the three police and escaped with weapons and ammunition taken from the checkpoint. Another police official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief reporters, said 11 police were killed.
Taliban spokesman Qari Yusouf Ahmadi claimed the attack.
In the capital, meanwhile, two gunmen on a motorbike opened fire at the home of a former Taliban leader late Friday, killing a security guard, said Fraidoon Obaidi, the head of the Kabul police's criminal investigation department.

The former Taliban leader, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, was not home at the time, Obaidi said.
Zaeef served as the Taliban's envoy to Pakistan when the group ruled Afghanistan in the 1990s but has since reconciled with the current US-backed government and has been involved in efforts to revive peace talks with the insurgents.
No one has claimed the attack, which came two days after Taliban fighters attacked the Kabul home of a parliamentarian from the restive southern Helmand province, killing eight people. The lawmaker survived the assault.