Dozens of Taliban rebels have stormed police posts in the remote northeastern Afghan province of Badakhshan, killing four officers and capturing at least 16 others.
Two policemen were injured and three others were missing after an intense battle in the mountainous province's Wardaj district, deputy provincial governor Shamsul Rahman Shams said.
"A big number of the Taliban carried out the attacks. The police were overpowered," he said from the provincial capital town of Faizabad.
"16 police were captured by the Taliban and taken away. Three others are also missing but we don't know what has happened to them," Shams said.
The rebels seized two police trucks and a quantity of ammunition.
Afghanistan's security forces, including about 170,000 police, are being trained, equipped and largely paid by a US-led NATO military coalition that has about 130,000 troops fighting the Taliban.
Mostly American, the force is scheduled to withdraw by the end of 2014 and hand over all security responsibilities to local forces.
Compared to their army counterparts, Afghan police are undertrained and underequipped and suffer more casualties in Taliban attacks.
Elsewhere, Afghanistan and Iran have agreed to a prisoner exchange, a sign of warming relations between the two neighbours ahead of the planned withdrawal of foreign combat forces from Afghanistan in 2014.
Thousands of Afghan prisoners are held in Iranian jails, some awaiting the death penalty for drug trafficking, and their imprisonment caused tension between the two countries last year.
