KABUL, 21 September 2004 — Afghan Vice President Nematullah Shahrani narrowly escaped a bomb attack in northern Afghanistan yesterday while two US soldiers were killed in a firefight in the south in the latest burst of violence ahead of next month’s election.
The remote-controlled bomb attack on Sharani in northeastern Kunduz province came just five days after President Hamid Karzai escaped a rocket attack in southern Paktia province forcing him to abort his first election campaign trip outside the Afghan capital.
Sharani, one of Karzai’s four vice presidents, was leading a convoy of senior government officials to open a road when the bomb exploded, officials said. “Shahrani’s car passed by, but the bomb hit another vehicle in which his bodyguards were driving,” Kunduz governor Mohammad Omer said by phone.
“A driver was slightly injured,” in the attack which occurred shortly after 1:00 p.m. (0830 GMT) some 230 kilometers (142 miles) north of Kabul, he said.
The attack comes just three weeks ahead of the country’s first direct presidential election and underlines concerns about whether widespread violence from both Taliban-led insurgents and local militia commanders will mar polls.
Kunduz Governor Omer blamed the attack on Taleban and Al-Qaeda operatives but the Taleban did not directly claim responsibility although a spokesman for the regime which was ousted by a US-led military campaign in late 2001 renewed his threats to disrupt the election.
“I have not been told anything about this particular incident but as we have announced in the past, Karzai, Karzai’s Cabinet and all the presidential candidates are our prime targets,” Taleban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakim said on a satellite call from an undisclosed location.
Hakimi added the Taleban were tracking the movements of all of Karzai’s Cabinet and that Shahrani was a target.
Meanwhile, two US soldiers were killed in a firefight in the troubled southeast, the US military said in a statement Six Afghan National Army troops and two other US-led coalition soldiers were wounded in the clash in Paktika province which borders Pakistan, it said in a statement.
The US soldiers received minor injuries while the wounded Afghans were evacuated to the Salerno forward operating base 200 kilometers (125 miles) south of Kabul, the statement said without giving further details.
Paktika borders Pakistan’s troubled South Waziristan tribal area where Pakistani forces are conducting operations against suspected foreign Al-Qaeda militants and their local supporters.
Meanwhile, Pakistan yesterady called for an improved security environment in Afghanistan for the upcoming presidential elections while rejecting allegations that Al-Qaeda and Taleban militants were using its territory to disrupt the electoral process.
“As the electoral campaign enters final stages, security must be beefed up,” Foreign Office spokesman Masood Khan told reporters in Islamabad. He said the number of International Assistance Security Forces (ISAF) troops, presently 8,000 in number, was “clearly inadequate” to meet the elections’ security needs.
The presidential elections, the first since the fall of the Taliban regime in late 2001, are slated for October 9 with parliamentary polls to be held in April next year.
US envoy in Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad and some Afghan leaders have accused Al-Qaeda terrorists and Taleban militants of using Pakistan as a staging ground to sabotage the electoral process. The Pakistani spokesman rejected the allegation, saying “the real danger lurks within Afghanistan.”
Pakistan also denied yesterday that Al-Qaeda and Taleban militants had met in its territory to plot ways to disrupt the upcoming presidential election in Afghanistan.
“Al-Qaeda operatives and remnants of the Taliban regime are on the run in Pakistan. They can’t afford the luxury of holding a conference in Pakistan,” the spokesman said. The spokesman, at a weekly press briefing, rejected as “baseless” a report from Kabul that opponents of the Afghan government met in Pakistan to plot ways to thwart the Oct. 9 election.
