Afghan attacks kill five as vote nears

Tuesday, August 04, 2009 KANDAHAR: Suicide and rocket attacks killed five people and wounded more than 20 others across Afghanistan on Tuesday, fanning security fears just over two weeks before elections. A provincial governor survived an assassination attempt just 10 kilometres (six miles) outside the Afghan capital Kabul and eight rockets slammed into the city, wounding a child and adult, authorities said. In the southern province of Zabul, a suicide attacker walked up to an intelligence agency vehicle in a busy bazaar and blew himself up, killing one of the agency's staff and four civilian passers-by, police said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility but the attack was similar to scores carried out by the Taliban, which routinely bombs security services in a bloody insurgency that reached record levels this year. Sixteen civilians, including three children, two agency staffers and a policeman were wounded, deputy provincial police chief Ghulam Jailani Khan said. Zabul is one of Afghanistan's most troubled provinces, part of the southern belt where the insurgency is strongest and where thousands of Western soldiers are pressing major battles to root out the Islamist hardliners. The Taliban claimed responsibility for a volley of rockets fired into Kabul at about dawn, saying they were aimed at an Afghan military base and the international airport. The interior ministry said eight slammed into the city, including one several hundred metres (feet) from the US embassy and others near the airport, in strikes that left a child wounded by shattered glass and also hurt a man. Police found and defused a ninth rocket, interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary said. There are periodic rocket attacks on Kabul but they rarely cause casualties or significant damage. Just outside the capital early Tuesday, the governor of the neighbouring province of Wardak escaped with his life when four mines placed under a bridge exploded as his vehicle crossed, the ministry said. Governor Mohammad Haleem Fidyee and his guards were unharmed, it said in a statement. Four suspects were arrested. A recent spike in violence that has seeped increasingly out of traditional southern and eastern strongholds has fanned fears about security in the countdown to the August 20 presidential and provincial council elections. The vote marks only the second time in history that Afghans will vote for a head of state and has been billed as a landmark on Western efforts to build democracy since the 2001 US-led invasion forced the Taliban out of government. President Hamid Karzai, who is seeking a second term in office, is widely expected to win among a field of 41 candidates. There are more than 100,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan mainly deployed under NATO and a separate US-led coalition that is trying to support Karzai's government in defeating the Taliban-led insurgency. Amid speculation the top US commander in Afghanistan may be seeking more American forces for the war, the Pentagon revealed overnight that Defence Secretary Robert Gates flew to Belgium for a secret meeting with the general. The Pentagon said Gates met General Stanley McChrystal and other top officers on Sunday to hear a progress report on an assessment of the Afghan war being prepared by the commander and due later this month. The meeting comes after a number of civilian experts advising McChrystal called publicly for a major increase in US troops in Afghanistan, a vast and largely rural country that offers ideal terrain for guerrilla warfare.