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The attack took place at a remote Afghan Local Police post in Ghazni Province, south of the capital, early Wednesday morning, according to General Zrawar Zahid, the Ghazni police chief.

Other Afghan officials said authorities had already arrested two policemen who they said were Taliban infiltrators who had carried out the attack.

Local officials said the attack in Habib Godala village in the Andar district took place about 1 a.m., after the policemen in the outpost had been drugged during dinner and fallen asleep. All were then shot at close range, and the attackers stole their weapons and set a police vehicle on fire before fleeing.

General Zahid said that 10 of the victims were Afghan Local Police officers who had finished their training, and seven others were recruits who were undergoing training. The A.L.P. program has been controversial in many parts of Afghanistan because of prominent insider attacks as well as accusations of human rights violations by the policemen.

The officers are vetted and trained by American special operations troops as self-defense forces for their own communities, and sometimes include groups of armed men who had formerly sided with the Taliban.

Khalil Hotaki, head of a peace group in Ghazni, complained that many local officials had tried to interfere in recruitment for the A.L.P. units, creating opportunities for Taliban infiltration. He said that a similar attempt to drug policemen had taken place a week earlier in the same district, but the drug had not been strong enough and the victims were able to prevent an attack.

A spokesman for the Taliban, Zabiullah Mujahid, emailed a statement to journalists claiming responsibility for the attack.

"Locals in the area were tired of the atrocities and crimes of these arbakais and their lives and property were not safe," Mr. Mujahid wrote, using the Afghan term for irregular militias. "By eliminating these 19 corrupt arbakais, oppression has been weakened and decreased in the area." He claimed 19 of them were killed.

The attack was just the latest in a series of such insider attacks, often involving the use of poisons or drugs to subdue other policemen, who are then shot while unconscious.

In January, an Afghan Local Police officer killed his commander and several colleagues in that manner, in Panjway District of Kandahar Province.

In a 10-day-long period in December, there were at least three such attacks by local policemen or others, resulting in 17 deaths.