Afghan Policeman Kills Five Colleagues

An Afghan policeman has shot dead five of his colleagues at a checkpoint in the northern province of Badghis, officials said Friday.

The attacker was a member of the U.S.-trained Afghan Local Police (ALP), a village-level policing program designed to provide security in some of Afghanistan's most dangerous and remote areas.

The ALP has been accused of thuggery and operating outside the law, and criticized for minimal training and screening of its members.

So-called "insider attacks" have plagued the Afghan security forces, though NATO officers say most are motivated by grudges and personal feuds rather than plots by Taliban infiltrators.

"The ALP man at a police checkpoint opened fire on his colleagues in Qadis district of Badghis on Thursday killing five others before he fled the area," Sharafuddin Sharaf, Badghis provincial police chief, told Agence France Presse.

Sharafuddin Majeedi, the Badghis governor's spokesman, confirmed the attack, saying investigators had been sent to the scene in the south of the province.

Insider attacks targeting international coalition troops have badly eroded trust between Afghans and their allies, who are training local security forces to take on the fight against Taliban militants.

Earlier this month two American soldiers were killed along with several local troops in Wardak province, just outside Kabul, in the latest insider killing.

In February, an Afghan police officer drugged 17 colleagues and shot them dead in eastern province Ghazni.