KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, 19 June 2005 — Suspected Taleban rebels have taken 18 police and government officials hostage and are threatening to execute them, officials said. Taleban guerrillas attacked a district capital for a second straight night and took 18 policemen prisoner. A senior police officer in Kandahar said the main government building in Mian Nishin, headquarters of the district by the same name, was under Taleban control after the Friday night attack.
Guerrillas also attacked government posts in the Dai Chopan district of Zabul province, adjoining Kandahar, Gulab Shah Alikhail, a spokesman for the province said. He said four guerrillas were killed but there were no government casualties.
Taleban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi said the guerrillas killed three policemen in the attack, while one militant died.
On Friday, a roadside bomb exploded in neighboring Helmand province, killing a soldier and wounding three policemen, including a district police chief. On Monday, four US soldiers were wounded in a suicide attack outside Kandahar city, where at least 20 people lost their lives in a suicide bomb attack on a mosque on June 1.
Also on Friday, the Afghan National Army (ANA) launched an operation against militants in Shah Wali Kot district on the outskirts of Kandahar city in which two militants and an Afghan government soldier were killed. “During the operation two Taleban were killed and two others were wounded. They left behind the dead,” ANA military commander for southern Afghanistan, Muslim Hamed, told AFP.
On Thursday in neighboring Zabul province, a bodyguard traveling with the district chief of Deh Chopan was killed and five other bodyguards wounded by a roadside bomb, Gullab Shah Ali Khail, the provincial spokesman, said. District chief Shah Jahan was also wounded in the blast, he said. Three years after their ouster by a US-led military campaign the Taleban continue to wage an insurgency in the south and east .
Meanwhile, the UN-backed electoral commission will launch a new voter registration drive next week for the country’s first post-conflict parliamentary elections, the organization said. The monthlong registration drive starting June 25 is to register voters who turned 18 since the October presidential election or missed their chance to register last year, Bismillah Bismil, head of the Joint Electoral Management Body, told reporters.
NATO announced this week that it will deploy 2,000 additional troops to boost security for the ballot. NATO peacekeepers will number more than 10,000 by the Sept. 18 vote. A further 18,000 troops are part of a US-dominated coalition hunting militants mostly in the country’s south and southeast.
In another development, airplanes loaded with food, tents and other emergency supplies rushed to northern Afghanistan yesterday after floods left dozens dead and thousands homeless, officials said. About 700 homes and several roads have been washed away in the floods over the past four days, said Abdul Majid, the governor of Badakhshan province, which was worst hit.
The exact death toll was not known. Majid said at least 25 people were believed killed in Badakhshan. An official with a government disaster management team in Kabul, Abdul Hamid, said the province’s toll was thought to be 36, while more than 50 were estimated to have died across all of northern Afghanistan.
