Taliban guerrillas have said they executed a district police chief who was among 31 people they were holding prisoner in Afghanistan's southern province of Kandahar.
The capture of the men has presented a fresh crisis for authorities in Kandahar, the worst-hit province in a surge of violence in recent months that has raised fears for parliamentary elections due to be held on Sept. 18.
In a separate incident in neighboring Helmand province, the guerrillas killed a judge, an intelligence official and a guard in the district of Anad-i-Ali to the west of the provincial capital Lashkargah on Friday night, a provincial spokesman said.
Overnight, three rockets hit the city of Kandahar, one of which seriously wounded two children, police said.
A senior police officer said on Saturday that Taliban guerrillas captured 30 policemen and a district chief in attacks on Thursday and Friday on Mian Nishin, a district in the north of Kandahar province, and took over the main government building.
Taliban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi said district police chief Nanai Khan, the senior policeman captured, was shot dead with three bullets on the orders of Taliban religious leaders.
"At 8:30 this morning we executed Nanai Khan after a fatwa from the mullahs," he said. "They said his crime was high so he should be executed."
Hakimi said the 30 others being held, who included the chief of the district, were still alive. "Their trial is going on."
Hakimi said the officer's body had been dumped at a village in Mian Nishin named Shai Khan. "The government can come and pick up his body," he said.
General Salim Khan, the deputy provincial police chief, said he had no information on the fate of those being held. He said only 13 people had been captured in all.
Taliban commander Mullah Rahim, who led the attacks, telephoned Reuters on Saturday night and handed the phone to Nanai Khan, who said he was going to be put on trial.
Asked if any of the group had been killed, a clearly nervous Khan initially replied: "Yes." But after a few seconds of silence on the line, he corrected himself and replied: "No, no."
The district is in the north of Kandahar province about 400 km (250 miles) southwest of Kabul and was the scene of operations by Afghan and U.S.-led forces last week in which government officials said nine guerrillas were killed.
Dozens of government troops and officials and 29 U.S. soldiers from the 20,000-strong U.S-led foreign force hunting the insurgents have died in Afghanistan since March.
More than 150 insurgents have been killed in clashes so far this year, according to U.S. and government figures.