KABUL, Afghanistan — Two gunmen on a motorbike shot and killed a high-ranking woman police official as she went to work in Afghanistan's largest southern city today, officials said.

Malalai Kakar led the department of crimes against women in Kandahar city, said Zalmai Ayubi, spokesman for the provincial governor. Her son, 18, was wounded in the attack, he said.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the death of the 41-year-old police official.

Militants frequently attack projects, schools and businesses run by women. The hard-line Taliban regime, which was ousted in the 2001 U.S.-led invasion, did not allow women outside the home without a male escort.

President Hamid Karzai condemned the assassination, as did the European Union, which said it was "appalled by the brutal targeting" of Kakar.

"Any murder of a police officer is to be condemned, but the killing of a female officer whose service was not only to her country, but to Afghan women, to whom Ms. Kakar served as an example, is particularly abhorrent," the EU said in a statement.

In other violence, an Afghan police official said a U.S.-led coalition killed three civilians in an operation apparently targeting a suicide bomb cell in eastern Afghanistan. That claim was disputed by the coalition, which said its troops killed two al-Qaida militants.

Gen. Abdul Jalal Jalal, the provincial police chief in the eastern province of Kunar, said airstrikes hit a compound in the province's Asmar district, killing three civilians.

The U.S.-led coalition said its troops targeted an al-Qaida cell responsible for a number of bomb attacks in Kunar province.

The coalition said two militants were killed after a firefight in one of the compounds. It said no civilians were killed. Capt. Scott Miller, a U.S. spokesman, said artillery strikes were used in the fight but no airstrikes.

It was impossible to independently verify either report in the remote area.

Civilian deaths are a highly sensitive topic in Afghanistan. Karzai has long pleaded with international troops to avoid civilian deaths in its operations.

The Afghan government and U.N. say that an Aug. 22 U.S. operation killed some 90 civilians in the western province of Herat, a strike that strained U.S.-Afghan relations.

An original U.S. investigation found that up to 35 militants and seven civilians were killed in that strike. However, a new investigation was opened — and is now under way — after video images emerged appearing to show many more dead than the U.S. had acknowledged.

The coalition said separately that it killed six militants and detained eight in two operations on Saturday.