Taliban-linked militants stormed a police post in northwestern Afghanistan, sparking a gunfight that killed two police and left three others missing, an official said Monday. The militants attacked the post late Sunday in Badghis province, killing two officers, provincial police chief Sayed Ahmad Sameh told selfnews. Three other policemen were missing, he added. Three Taliban fighters were also killed in the hour-long gunfight, he said. Elsewhere in the province, eight Taliban militants were killed in an ongoing Afghan police and army operation backed by international troops, he said. The police chief said a gunfight between two armed groups from rival tribes killed another five people in the same province. Afghanistan is gripped by an increasingly deadly insurgency in which followers of the Taliban regime, ousted by the 2001 US-led invasion, are trying to overthrow the Western-backed government in Kabul. The insurgency has gained pace each year, with 500 Western troops killed in 2009, the deadliest year since the 2001 US-led invasion. 