An Afghan provincial police chief and nine other officers have been killed in a gun battle inside the offices of the local attorney general in the southern province of Kandahar.

Officials said the gunfight on Monday erupted after the police were called in when US-trained Afghan security guards attempted to grab a prisoner from the attorney general's office.

The attorney general's staff had called for police help, Zemarai Bashary, the interior ministry spokesman, said.

"The Kandahar police chief came to the area to assess the situation himself," Bashary told the AFP news agency. "As he arrived, these armed men opened fire and started a clash," he said.

Bashary said the situation had now been brought under control, but could not say whether the security guards had managed to escape and whether they had managed to seize the prisoner they were after.

Karzai statement

Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, has demanded that US coalition forces hand over the security guards involved in the shootout.

The president called for the "immediate handover by the coalition forces to the Afghan government of the private security guards involved in the killing of Kandahar province security officials", the statement said.

"President Karzai said that such incidents negatively impact the state-building process in Afghanistan and called upon coalition forces to avoid actions that weaken the government," it said.

The statement said that the guards were contractors for a private security firm loosely affiliated with coalition forces, our correspondent said.

Kandahar in southern Afghanistan is a Taliban stronghold.

Fears of mounting violence have grown ahead of key presidential and provincial council elections in the country in August.

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