Kabul, August 02: Gunmen on Saturday opened fire on a campaign manager for Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s re-election bid, killing a guard, while one French and three US soldiers died in other insurgent attacks, officials said.
The killings fuelled concern about the security of the August 20 elections with the extremist Taliban militia demanding a boycott and insurgency-linked violence at a nearly eight-year high in the war-scarred country.
The men who opened fire on Karzai’s campaign manager in the central province of Ghanzi were believed to be from the Taliban, provincial government spokesman Ismail Jahangir said.
They missed their target, Fazil Ahmad, but killed one of his guards and wounded two other people, including a candidate for provincial council elections to run alongside the presidential vote.
It was the latest in a series of attacks on the elections process that have left three of the more than 3,000 provincial candidates dead.
One of Karzai’s main challengers for the top job, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, today complained that the government was failing to secure the elections process.
Two members of his provincial campaign teams have been killed in recent attacks and four injured, the candidate told reporters. “It’s the duty of the government to provide security not only during election campaigning but during the voting. The government has totally failed to provide security in this regard,” Abdullah said.
“If the government has taken any measures to secure the elections process, it must tell the people about it so people can participate in campaigning and election day with confidence,” he added.
The Taliban this week demanded a boycott of the vote, Afghanistan’s second-ever presidential election, and ordered its fighters to block all roads ahead of election day to stop people from going to the polls.
The militia called on Afghans to instead take up a holy war to “free their invaded country from the invaders,” it said.
Separate new insurgent attacks today killed one French and three US soldiers, the military said, in a bloody start to the month after July saw the highest death toll since 2001.
Around 230 French, US and Afghan troops came under fire in the Kapisa province, northeast of Kabul, while on an operation with Afghan troops, the French military in Afghanistan said in a statement.
“One French soldier was hit and died of the injury. Immediately the troops returned fire and counter-attacked the insurgents,” it said.
–Agencies