KABUL, 8 September 2005 — A car exploded in a southern Afghan town yesterday, killing its three occupants and a passerby, in what appeared to be a bungled suicide attack, a provincial official said. Security has been stepped up across Afghanistan in the run-up to Sept. 18 elections that have been denounced by Taleban insurgents, who have been battling US and government forces since their ouster in 2001.

The car was passing a policeman’s house in the town of Girishk when it exploded but that was not believed to have been the target, said Mohammed Wali Alizai, spokesman for the Helmand provincial governor. “It seems their aim was to carry out a suicide attack on the Americans but it went off early,” Alizai said. “The car was completely destroyed, it’s in pieces,” he said.

The Taleban claimed responsibility. Abdul Latif Hakimi, a spokesman for the militants, said a Taleban suicide bomber set off the blast and eight Americans had been killed. The United States has 20,000 troops in Afghanistan, most of them are focusing on election security, as are 10,000 NATO-led peacekeepers and tens of thousands of government forces.

In a separate incident, two Taleban fighters and four Afghan government soldiers were killed in a clash in Ghazni province to the southwest of the capital on Tuesday night, a provincial official said.

Meanwhile, the government announced yesterday that an advance guard of elite Australian troops has begun new operations against insurgents in Afghanistan ahead of elections.

They will be joined soon by the rest of a 190-strong force of Special Air Services soldiers and commandos deployed to fight a resurgence in rebel attacks, Defense Minister Robert Hill told reporters in Canberra.

Australia deployed some 1,000 troops in support of the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, but they were withdrawn toward the end of 2002. The new troops are believed to be in provinces along the border with Pakistan but Hill would not say where.

“We have an area of operations that has been particularly troubling for a long time in terms of Taleban activity. That continues to be so,” he said.