Taliban suicide bombers have assassinated a senior army general and his bodyguard in Afghanistan's southern Kandahar province, Afghan officials said Friday.
Three gunmen with explosives strapped to their bodies entered the home of General Khan Agha in the Dand district disguised as guests late Thursday.
The gunmen opened fire before blowing themselves up or being killed in a firefight with security forces, regional Corps Commander General Dawood Shah Wafadar told VOA.
The deadly overnight attack also left a teenaged son of the slain general seriously wounded.
Wafadar said Agha, the deputy head of 205th Atal Military Corps for civilian affairs, routinely received guests at his residence.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, with a spokesman saying two of its suicide bombers participated in it and 10 Afghan security personnel, including Agha, were killed while many others were wounded.
The insurgent group often gives inflated casualty figures in such attacks.
Separately, at least seven police officers were killed in a suspected insider attack in Kandahar's Arghandab district. Officials said the slain members of the Afghan Local Police, or ALP, were asleep when three of their colleagues sprayed them with bullets and fled the scene along with the victims' weapons and ammunition.
The ALP is a community policing system established about six years ago to protect villages and remote districts around Afghanistan because of the insufficient presence of army and police forces there.
The Taliban spokesman later claimed responsibility, with a spokesman saying the assailants were its loyalists and returned to the insurgent ranks after carrying out the attack.
