Kabul (ANTARA News/AFP) - Eight Afghan police were killed early Wednesday when Taliban militants apparently helped by an insider overran their checkpost in troubled southern Afghanistan, an official said.

Daud Ahmadi, a spokesman for the local administration in Helmand province, blamed the insurgent group for the killings but said the milita had help from at least one police officer conspiring in the attack.

"The attackers were helped by one policeman who now has fled with his gun," he told AFP, referring to the attack in the Nahri Sarraj district of Helmand.

"Three other policemen are injured and the one who was a Taliban informant, the Taliban accomplice, has fled with the attackers," Ahmadi told AFP.

On Tuesday, five people were killed in a suicide car bombing near the police headquarters in Helmand`s provincial capital Lashkar Gar, two months after British troops handed the Afghan government control.

Afghanistan is plagued by a deadly 10-year insurgency that has increased each year since it was launched by the remnants of the Taliban following their ouster from power in late 2001.

The rebels have carried out several attacks, some of them high profile, helped by infiltrating the Western-trained Afghan security forces.

Late Sunday, one American was killed and another injured when an Afghan employee opened fire at an annex to the US embassy in Kabul used by the CIA. It was not known if the shooter was a Taliban infiltrator. (*)

Editor: Kunto Wibisono
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