KABUL, Afghanistan — The bodies of four of eight Afghan policemen who left their checkpoint and never returned were found Tuesday in Helmand province of southern Afghanistan, and NATO officials said three servicemen had been killed in the past two days.
Deputy provincial police commander Kumaluddin Khan said a farmer spotted one of the bodies in a field on the east side of Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital.
The farmer called local officials, who discovered all four bodies.
The policemen, who disappeared Monday, had all been fatally stabbed.
“We don’t know who killed them,” Khan said. “Four are still missing.”
Also in the south, a NATO serviceman died Tuesday in an insurgent attack, the coalition said. Two others were killed Monday in a bombing in the east.
The coalition did not provide the nationalities of victims or any other details.
It typically waits for the relevant national authorities to confirm deaths of service personnel.
A total of 68 NATO servicemen have been killed this year, including 36 in February.
Last year was the deadliest of the nine-year Afghan war for the international forces, with 701 killed.
For the second time in two weeks, NATO and Afghan officials are offering conflicting accounts of a coalition operation in Kunar province, a hotbed of the insurgency in northeast Afghanistan.
The coalition said it killed nine armed insurgents Tuesday after an early-morning rocket attack.
But Gen. Khalilullah Ziayi, the police chief in Kunar province, said coalitionhelicopters fired into the mountainous area, killing nine children who were gathering wood.
He said police were still investigating the deaths.
In a statement, NATO said: “The coalition aircraft positively identified nine armed insurgents in the area where the rockets had been fired and engaged them ... hitting only the nine insurgent fighters. There were no reports of civilians in the area.”
Late last month, tribal elders in Kunar claimed that NATO forces killed more than 50 civilians in air and ground strikes.
The international coalition denied the claim, saying video showed troops targeting and killing dozens of insurgents.
Separately in the east, residents in Ghazni burned blankets, clothing and other items that they said coalitiontroops had distributed in the city Monday.
One resident said the Taliban issued a burn order, but another said Ghazni citizens decided to burn the goods on their own.
“Americans distributed these items to us yesterday,” said Hafizullah, a resident of Ghazni who uses only one name.
“Then the Taliban ordered us to gather all the things we received yesterday and burn them.”
However, Ghazni resident Shamsul Haq Mohammadi said the Taliban did not order the items destroyed.
“The people themselves brought these things out from their houses,” he said, standing near the fire started outside a mosque.
“We don’t want anything from the infidels,” Mohammadi said.
Front Section, Pages 5 on 03/02/2011