Islamic State’s Khorasan Province branch claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement online and said it killed the police chief and 13 officers.
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Attaullah Khogyani, the governor’s spokesman, told Pajhwok Afghan News Shah Mahmood, police chief for the district, was among five policemen killed in the attack.
He says 15 ISIS fighters were killed and seven wounded in the battle that followed.
But the group has also been intermittently airing propaganda through a mobile radio station, which the government claimed to have destroyed in an airstrike in February.
Obama on Friday approved broader role for the USA military to assist the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) to fight the Taliban-led insurgency.
The Taliban, which is in a much stronger position than IS in Afghanistan, distanced itself from the attack.
The decision will allow U.S. troops, who have been in a training and advisory role in Afghanistan since the start of 2015, to collaborate more closely with local forces in striking the Taliban.
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Some 9,800 USA troops remain in Afghanistan in an advisory capacity, down from a peak of around 100,000 in March 2011. Now, under the expanded authorities, US forces can accompany Afghan forces on missions, and carry out offensive strikes on the Taliban or other threats if such strikes would have a “strategic effect on the battlefield”, according to a senior defense official. That number is set to drop to just 5,500 by the year’s end.
