A suicide bomber targeted a convoy of foreign forces just outside the city of Lashkar Gah in the volatile southern Afghan province of Helmand, killing one civilian and wounding 12 others, local officials said yesterday.

Afghan security forces have been fighting Taliban insurgents for weeks in the area around Lashkar Gah and in surrounding districts. The widening insurgency has escalated since foreign forces ended most combat operations last year.

International forces still provide training and other assistance and a limited number of US troops are engaged in counter-terrorism operations. But there was no immediate confirmation from Nato’s Resolute Support mission in Kabul of an attack on any of its vehicles.

“A convoy of three foreign forces vehicles was coming to the city from Marjah when targeted by a suicide bomber driving a car,” said Omar Zawak, a spokesman for the Helmand governor’s office, citing information from local police.

He said one of the vehicles caught fire causing casualties.

Meanwhile at least 65 Afghan soldiers have defected to the Taliban, taking their weapons and equipment with them and 88 have been killed in days of heavy fighting in the volatile southern province of Helmand, the local provincial Governor said early yesterday.

The latest losses underline the heavy toll being exacted on Afghan security forces, now fighting largely alone since international troops ended most combat operations last year.

Police and soldiers have been engaged in near-continuous combat with insurgents for the past three weeks in the districts of Lashkar Gah, Marjah and Nadali in Helmand, one of the Islamist movement’s tradition-al strongholds.

Although they have so far repelled Taliban efforts to take the provincial capital Lashkar Gah, they have not been able to push back the insurgents decisively from areas around the city.

“Soldiers from an Afghan army brigade in Station area have joined the Taliban with their equipment and weapons,” Helmand Governor Mirza Khan Rahimi said. He said a team had been sent to the town of Sangin to investigate the incident.

Taliban spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi said in a statement that five commanders and 65 army soldiers “repented their mistakes and surrendered to Mujahideen”, bringing five armoured personnel carriers as well as weapons and ammunition.

Since the fall of the key northern city of Kunduz, which the Taliban briefly took over in September, the government of President Ashraf Ghani has come under mounting pressure over the worsening security situation.

Thousands demonstrated in Kabul this week demanding action after seven members of the Hazara ethic minority were brutally executed by Islamist militants.

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