Afghan policeman killed after surviving 16 attacks

An Afghan police officer who was targeted by Taliban militants and survived 16 bomb attacks was killed by an improvised explosive device on Sunday, officials said.

Tor Jan, the leader of a police post in the southern province of Uruzgan, a hotbed of the insurgency against the Kabul government and its Western allies, was renowned for leading attacks against the Taliban.

Jan had survived 16 explosions, most of them aimed at him personally, but was killed when his vehicle was hit by a blast in Tirin Kot district where he was based, Uruzgan police spokesman Farid Ail told AFP.

"He was very active against the Taliban. The Taliban considered him an enemy," he said, describing Jan as a "brave officer".

"He had survived 16 such attacks. Today in the 17th attack he was martyred."

Improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, are the weapon of choice for Taliban insurgents in the long-running conflict.

They are responsible for the bulk of military casualties among both Afghan security personnel and the US-led NATO force, and were also the single largest killer of Afghan civilians last year, according to a UN report in February.

The UN Mission in Afghanistan document said that a total of 3,021 civilians died in the Afghan conflict -- mostly at the hands of insurgents -- in 2011, up eight percent from 2010.

Afghan forces are to take over security responsibility across the whole of the country by the end of 2014, when the last foreign combat troops, who currently number 130,000, are due to be withdrawn.

More than 2,900 foreign soldiers have been killed in the conflict, according to a tally by the icasualties.org website.

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