KANDAHAR: A suicide bomber drove an explosives-packed Humvee into a police compound in Afghanistan on Friday, killing at least six officers and destroying a building, officials said.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the pre-dawn attack on the Maiwand district police headquarters in the southern province of Kandahar, the latest deadly assault by the insurgents, who have been increasingly targeting security installations.

The vehicle was carrying an estimated 3,000 kilogrammes of explosives, Maiwand district police chief Sultan Mohammad told AFP.

It was not possible to verify his claim. If true, that would be roughly twice the number of explosives used in a massive truck bomb in Kabul that killed around 150 people in May.

“We have six police officers martyred and five wounded,” Mohammad said, adding the figures could change.

Kandahar police spokesman Ghorzang Afridi confirmed the death toll.

“All the victims were local policemen,” Afridi told AFP.

Those killed were new recruits.

Vice President Mike Pence told US troops in Afghanistan on Thursday that they have put the Taliban on the run, as he became the most senior Trump administration official to visit the men and women fighting America’s longest-ever war.

Flying secretly through the day and night on a standard unmarked US Air Force C-17 transport plane, Pence corkscrewed into Bagram Airfield on the unannounced visit to thank some of the roughly 15,000 US personnel still hoping to turn the tide in the conflict, now in its 17th year.

The superpower’s vexed campaign against Al Qaeda and the Taliban — born from the rubble of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington — receives ever-less public attention in the United States these days.

“The American people deserve to know that with the courage of everyone gathered here, we’re making real progress in this fight for freedom in Afghanistan,” Pence told the troops.

“We’ve dramatically increased American air strikes. And together with our Afghan partners, we’ve put the Taliban on the defensive,” he said, also pointing at efforts to target the drug trafficking networks that help fund the Taliban.

“All across this country we’ve won new victories against the terrorists, no matter what they call themselves or where they try to hide.”

Agence France-Presse