An entire contingent of the police on duty in an Afghan town appeared to have switched sides to the Taliban, surrendering a police station after cutting a deal with the militants, and leaving the Afghan and US forces stumped.
The Taliban capture of the station, however, did not last long as the government forces
recaptured the centre in Khogenyani, a town Southwest of Kabul.
However, the police officers, as many as 19 of them vanished, as did their guns, trucks,
uniforms and food, a New York Times report said.
A spokesman for the Taliban said that they had cut a deal with the Khogeyani's police
force and then burned the station, The Times said.
"This was not an attack, but a plot," said Mohammed Yasin, the chief of the Khogeyani
police force.
"The Taliban and the police made a deal. We never force people to join us," said a
Taliban spokesman.
"The police joined us voluntarily and are happy to work with us, and to start the holy war
shoulder to shoulder with their Taliban brothers".
Musa Khan Akbarzada, the provincial governor, said the Afghan forces were looking for
the missing officers but the Taliban spokesman said that they were already out of reach.
"The Taliban exist in and around the district centres, and we have our own judges,
courts, district governors and other officials," the Taliban spokesman said.
"We do our guerrilla attacks and then leave the district centre. This is just a building".
Meanwhile, the bodies of two female Afghan aid workers were found on a roadside in
Helmand province on Sunday.
The women, Majabina and Nazaneen who ran a small vocational training
centre, were shot dead.
The centre helped women to sew, make clothes, cut hair and prepare
fruit preserves, NYT reported.