KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, 6 September 2005 — Afghan and US forces searching for a kidnapped election candidate have killed 13 suspected rebels and arrested 44 others in a raid on a Taleban hide-out, local officials said yesterday. The violence on Sunday in the southern province and former Taleban enclave of Kandahar further raises security fears before Sept. 18’s parliamentary elections, which the ousted regime has vowed to disrupt.
Kandahar Governor Assadullah Khaled said that “13 Taleban were killed as a result of aerial bombing” in the mountains between Ghorak and Khakrez districts, while 44 rebels were arrested. Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Mohammed Zahir Azimi said one Afghan soldier was wounded when helicopter-borne US and Afghan forces raided the alleged rebel den.
He said he had no details of Taleban casualties but confirmed the arrests, adding: “They were arrested armed, which indicates they are Taleban.” Taleban fighters abducted the candidate as well as a district governor and his three guards in Ghorak on Friday. They later claimed to have killed the five. Candidate Mohammed Yaqoob, the governor of Ghorak district, Haji Mohammed Nawab and the three police guards were abducted from a road 90 kilometers northwest of Kandahar city.
“As of yet we have not been able to find the bodies of the five kidnapped people,” defense spokesman Azimi said.
US military spokesman Cindy Moore said the operation involving US forces was still ongoing and confirmed that at least 40 “enemy combatants” had been detained.
The Taleban, who were toppled by US-led forces in late 2001, have pledged to disrupt the elections and more than 1,000 people have died in violence so far this year. At the weekend a bomb killed a parliamentary candidate while eight policemen, two militants and a civilian were killed in other incidents.
Candidate Habibullah Khan, from the southeastern province of Helmand, was severely injured by a land mine planted outside his house early Sunday, police said. He died later in hospital.
Afghans are being given telephones, televisions and turbans by candidates seeking their votes in elections, residents said yester. “I told him we were 50 people and we would vote for him and he said he would pay $10 for each person,” one resident of the northern city of Mazr-e-Sharif told Reuters, referring to an election candidate. “He gave me a mobile phone as well, to keep in touch,” he said.
Other residents in the north said they had been given televisions or cassette recorders, and some had been promised cash for putting up a candidate’s picture in their car window. About 5,800 candidates are running in the elections. The rules say candidates for the lower house of Parliament, known as the Wolesi Jirga, or House of the People, cannot spend more than 750,000 afghanis ($15,000) during their campaign.
Candidates running for a seat on one of the councils that will be set up in all 34 provinces cannot spend more than 375,000 afghanis ($7,500). Some candidates have been traveling to villages in their provinces, slaughtering animals and throwing feasts. As well as a good meal, villagers are often offered cash or a new turban in exchange for promising support on election day, a resident of the eastern town of Khost said.
Also in Helmand suspected Taleban militants killed a police chief, his son and three bodyguards in an ambush which left two rebels dead. In the southern province of Zabul four Afghan policemen were killed in two separate attacks. Foreigners have also been targeted in recent weeks.
Meanwhile, flash floods caused by torrential rains in eastern Afghanistan have left at least four people dead, officials said.
The deluge on Sunday in Nazan, a district in the province of Nangarhar, washed away farms, homes and about 300 head of livestock, said Shukrullah Khan, a manager at Afghanistan’s natural disaster agency. “Three women and a young boy were killed in the floods,” he said.
