Taliban gunmen killed 16 Afghan policemen in two attacks on Monday.

Eight policemen died in a pre-dawn attack at a checkpoint in the northern province of Baghlan.

At roughly the same time, another eight members of the Afghan National Police were killed at a checkpoint in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province in the country's south.

Helmand province spokesman Daud Ahmadi said the attack occurred on the northeast outskirts of Lashkar Gah. He said a missing policeman may have been linked to the attackers. The Taliban also took a police vehicle, six Kalashnikov rifles and a heavy machine-gun, he said.

In the attack in Baghlan, two militants died and one was wounded in the attack, which took place on the main road in the province.

Also on Monday, an Afghan-international security forced detained a weapons smuggler and some militants in the eastern province of Khost.

The smuggler is suspected of working with the al-Qaeda linked Haqqani network, which directs it attacks in eastern Afghanistan from the Waziristan region in Pakistan.

With files from The Associated Press