Afghan Police Forces Deflect Taliban Attack on Governor KABUL, Afghanistan - An attack by six Taliban infiltrators in the eastern province of Paktika on Thursday killed three police officers, but was put down before it reached the government offices the attackers were targeting, Afghan officials said. The fighting again put the spotlight on the Afghan Local Police forces, which are trained by American Special Operations personnel and are seen as a critical hedge against the Taliban as Western forces begin withdrawing. The A.L.P., which was part of the response to the Paktika attack, have been the focus of intensified Taliban assaults as the annual fighting season has gotten under way across the country. The attack on Thursday began when six gunmen wearing explosive vests under local police uniforms tried to pass through a security checkpoint near the district governor's building. Police forces stopped the men to question them, and a gunbattle broke out, eventually stretching to two hours before the last attacker was killed. Two of the attackers detonated their explosives during the course of the fight, but no civilians were hurt. Two members of the Afghan Local Police and one member of the national police force were killed. Paktika Province is one of the eastern border regions near Pakistan, and it has long been an area where Afghan government control has been spotty, and tenuous even where it exists. It is in such regions that the Afghan Local Police program is considered crucial while the national military and police forces begin to take over full security responsibility from international forces. On Thursday, an Afghan adviser to the president reported progress in the NATO handover to Afghan control. The official, Ashraf Ghani, said: "Our findings from the first and second tranches of transition show that ever since the transition started security has either improved or at least it has not deteriorated in the transitioned areas." In a separate briefing at NATO headquarters, American military leaders said Afghan Local Police units had now been created in 65 out of the 99 districts across the country identified by the Afghan government in 2010 as requiring the new forces. The numbers were on track to grow to 19,000 by the end of the year and would reach 30,000 as planned by the beginning of 2014, the last year of the NATO mission in Afghanistan, said Col. John Evans, deputy commanding officer of the United States Special Operations units responsible for training the A.L.P. The forces themselves have come under increasing suspicion, however, as allegations of violence, theft and human rights abuses have led to fears that Western countries may merely be arming an unreliable militia that could be used by various warlords after NATO forces withdraw. In a highly critical study released last September, Human Rights Watch detailed allegations that some local police had killed and raped civilians, stolen land and carried out other abuses against the Afghan villagers they were supposed to be protecting, In a report responding to the study in December, the military admitted some of the allegations were credible but rebutted others. On Thursday, Colonel Evans said he had confidence in the vetting process and that the police were showing that, for the most part, they could hold their own. In an analysis of 1,000 armed incidents across 65 districts where the local police faced activity by insurgents, in about 80 percent of the cases, they stood and fought, he said. "The test is how they performed under fire and they have done remarkably well," he said. They are paying the price in blood everyday. American Special Operations mentors were now preparing to move out of some of the first districts that were doing well enough on their own, in order to pass full authority to the local Afghans and move on to building local police forces in the remaining districts, he said. An employee of The New York Times contributed reporting from Khost Province.