9 Afghan soldiers killed in attack on checkpoint

Afghan officials say insurgents attacked a checkpoint in southern Afghanistan, killing nine Afghan soldiers and wounding seven others.

The Helmand provincial governor's office says the Afghan soldiers died Tuesday night when armed militants attacked an Afghan National Army checkpoint in Washer district.

Seven insurgents were killed in the attack.

Also in Helmand, insurgents clashed Tuesday night with Afghan police in Nad Ali district. An insurgent commander was killed and six other militants were captured during the battle.

Insurgents are trying to regain territory they lost during the past two years when tens of thousands of U.S., Nato and Afghan forces routed them from their strongholds in the south.

Bomb destroys 22 Nato supply trucks

A bomb planted by the Taliban destroyed 22 Nato trucks carrying supplies to their forces in northern Afghanistan, the Taliban and police said on Wednesday.

 Eighteen fuel trucks and four supply vehicles were parked in Aibak, the capital of Samangan province, when a bomb ripped through them, wounding one person, local police said. 

 "At 2 a.m. the mujahideen attacked the invader Nato trucks," the Taliban said in a statement, referring to the wagons which had been driven from Uzbekistan to Afghanistan's north.

 The trucks were attacked in the same province where prominent anti-Taliban lawmaker Ahmad Khan Samangani was killed on Saturday at his daughter's wedding, in a suicide bomb attack that killed 22 other guests. 

 "We believe the Taliban carried this out. Eighteen trucks have been totally destroyed, the rest were damaged by fire," Samangan police chief Khalil Andarabi told Reuters.

 Separately, police in neighbouring Baghlan province said they had detained 10 suspected Taliban members with so-called magnetic bombs, which they were trying to attach to supply trucks. 

 Pakistan recently reopened its border crossings with Afghanistan for Nato supplies after shutting them in November after a U.S. airstrike unintentionally killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. 

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