Afghan officials say Taliban fighters have stormed more than a dozen security posts in the country's south and west, killing at least 30 members of local security forces.
Matiullah Helal, a police spokesman in the southern province of Kandahar, said on November 14 that 22 police officers were killed and 15 others were wounded when the militants stormed 15 security posts in the Maywand and Zhari districts overnight.
Helal said that some gunbattles between the attackers and security forces continued until the morning.
He said 45 militants were killed and 35 other injured in the fighting.
Another police official, Zia Durrani, said none of the checkpoints was captured in the attacks.
"Our forces resisted until they received reinforcements and air support," Zia Durrani said. "The Taliban were defeated."
The governor of Kandahar's Naway district, Sarajuddin Sarhadi, said five police officers were also killed at checkpoints in his district.
Khalid Pashtun, a member of parliament from the region, was quoted as saying that as many as 37 police officers were killed in the attacks in the province.
In the western province of Farah, officials said that at least three members of the Afghan security forces and three civilians died in two separate Taliban attacks.
Mohammad Naser Mehri, the spokesman for the provincial governor, said 15 militants were also killed in the fighting.
A provincial council member for Farah, Jamila Amini, said that one security post fell to the Taliban before it was retaken when Afghan forces received reinforcements and air support.
Taliban spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi said the group claimed responsibility for the assaults in both provinces.
They come as the Western-backed government in Kabul is struggling to beat back insurgents in the wake of the exit of most NATO forces in 2014.
The raids in Kandahar and Farah came hours after a suicide attacker rammed an explosives-laden vehicle into a U.S. military convoy in Kandahar.
A spokesman for NATO's Resolute Support mission in Afghanistan said four U.S. service members were injured in the blast.
With reporting by Reuters, AFP, and AP
