An Afghan policeman linked to the Taliban shot dead 11 of his colleagues at a checkpoint in the southern province of Helmand, officials said Tuesday, in the latest so-called “insider attack”.

The incident occurred late Monday while the policemen were sleeping in their barracks in the provincial capital Lashkar Gah, as the Taliban escalate a deadly winter campaign of violence.

Bloodied corpses of the policemen were strewn around the checkpoint, many of them shot from close range, witnesses said, in a setback for Afghan forces before what is expected to be another fierce spring fighting season.

“A policeman affiliated to the Taliban shot 11 of his colleagues, killing all of them,” a provincial official told AFP, declining to be named.

“He then fled the area, taking all the ammunition and firearms with him,” he said, adding that police had launched a search for the Taliban infiltrator.

The Boost government hospital in Lashkar Gah had received the bodies of the 11 policemen, a health official told AFP.

Taliban insurgents, who control vast swathes of the opium-ravaged province, claimed responsibility for the killings.

So-called insider attacks — when Afghan soldiers and police turn their guns on their colleagues or on international troops — have been a major problem during the more than 15-year-long war.

Such attacks have sapped morale and caused deep mistrust within security ranks.

In a similar incident last September, two Afghan soldiers with suspected Taliban links killed at least 12 of their comrades as they slept in the volatile northern province of Kunduz.

Source: AFP