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Five Afghan police shot dead seven fellow officers as they slept, before defecting to join Taliban guerrillas fighting in southern Afghanistan, a provincial official said on Monday.

Sunday night's incident outside Qalat, the provincial capital of southern province of Zabul, comes amid the bloodiest period in an insurgency raging since U.S.-backed forces toppled the militants' government in 2001...

While there have been many cases of police running away from the Taliban, hitherto there have been no reports of police defecting to the guerrillas...

Last week, the Taliban attacked a district headquarters in neighboring Uruzgan province, killed more than 10 police, captured up to 40 others, but released 20 of them after getting "commitments that they would desert the government".

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