Coalition strikes kill 9 Afghan cops

The US-led coalition, helping the government fight Taliban and other extremists, said the combined Afghan and US patrol had been acting in self-defence after coming under attack from a “non-uniformed hostile force.”

Rasouli said the police chief of Farah’s Anar Dara district, on the border with Iran, was among the wounded and was in a serious condition.

Nato’s International Security Assistance Force said meanwhile its soldiers had killed four Afghan civilians by accident late Saturday when mortar rounds landed off-target in the eastern province of Paktika near Pakistan.

One of the mortars landed on a house, Afghan authorities in the area said.

In other violence Sunday, three children were killed in the southern province of Helmand when a bomb blew up a minivan, provincial police chief Muhammad Hussien Andiwal said. Two children and two adults were wounded.