KABUL: Insurgents attacked three convoys ferrying fuel and supplies to NATO troops stationed in western and eastern Afghanistan, killing nine Afghan security guards and torching at least 15 fuel tankers, officials said Saturday. The Taliban recently launched its long-awaited spring offensive as the insurgents try to regain territory lost in the fall and winter to the US-led coalition. Unable to match NATO's firepower, the militants instead frequently conduct small-scale strikes — on convoys or NATO patrols — as well as brazen suicide bombings on government targets. Two of the attacks on the supply convoys took place Saturday in eastern Ghazni province, where a pair of roadside bombs killed four Afghan security guards escorting the trucks to a nearby base for Polish troops, said provincial police chief Mohammed Hussain. Insurgents also ambushed a NATO fuel convoy late Friday along the border between Herat and Farah provinces, killing five Afghan guards. Seven other guards were wounded in the attack, said Abdul Rashied, a local police chief. Insurgents later set fire to 15 fuel tankers. The vast majority of the fuel for the roughly 132,000 international troops is ferried in by truck from Pakistan before it is distributed to NATO forces across Afghanistan. It takes roughly 100 truckloads of fuel to keep coalitions forces moving for a single day. Insurgents frequently target NATO fuel tankers in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, though the coalition said in February that fewer than 1 percent of all supply convoys face militant attack. British soldier killed in attack A British soldier was shot dead in an insurgent attack in Afghanistan Saturday, bringing to 374 the number killed in operations there since 2001, a British Defense Ministry statement said. The serviceman from 3rd Battalion The Mercian Regiment (Staffords) died on a patrol with the Afghan National Army in the Nahr-e Saraj district of the troubled southern province of Helmand, it said. The patrol deployed from a nearby base to meet with people who had recently re-occupied the Haji Tor Aga Kalay area in the province, said Task Force Helmand spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Tim Purbrick. Meanwhile, in the eastern city of Jalalabad, insurgents kidnapped a provincial council member for Logar province and three of his family members. Council member Abdulkhaliq Khairkhowa had been traveling along a main highway near Jalalabad late Friday night to attend a funeral the following day, said Dr. Abduwali Wakil, the chief of Logar's provincial council. One man inside the car hid under the seats and was left behind by the kidnappers, Wakil said. That man later followed the kidnappers to the Torghar Mountains, a range of high peaks controlled by the Taliban, before returning to inform authorities, Wakil said.
