KABUL, 18 September 2004 — Three suspected Taleban members have been arrested for trying to kill Afghan President Hamid Karzai by firing a rocket at his helicopter during his first election campaign trip outside Kabul, officials said yesterday.
The attack on Thursday in the southeastern town of Gardez, in which no one was injured, was part of a Taleban campaign to disrupt Oct. 9 presidential elections, government officials said.
The suspects, aged from 20 to 23, were captured shortly after Thursday’s attack, in which a rocket flew over Karzai’s US military helicopter and about 400 supporters gathered to meet him at a school as he was about to touch down in Gardez.
The president’s campaign trip, his first outside Kabul, was immediately aborted.
The men were captured after they tried to flee by motorcycle and were chased to a house in the center of Gardez, where police found detonators and explosives, said Interior Ministry spokesman Lutfullah Mashal.
“They admitted during questioning that they carried out the attack,” Mashal said, adding that the men fired the rocket from the village of Rabat on the outskirts of town.
The former ruling Taleban militia, who have vowed to disrupt what will be Afghanistan’s first ever direct presidential polls, quickly claimed responsibility for the attack.
The captured men were suspected of being members of the Taleban, said Haji Assadullah Wafa, the governor of Paktia province, of which Gardez is the capital.
“It’s not written on their foreheads that they are Talibs, but their beards and clothes are like Talibs,” he said. He gave their names as Saeed Amin, Ahmad Shah and Muhammad.
Another government official, who did not want to be identified, said the men were from the Taleban and wanted to disrupt the election.
The incident was the most serious known threat to the US-backed Karzai since he escaped an assassination attempt in the southern city of Kandahar just over two years ago.
The latest attack came as his rivals in the presidential election called for a delay of the vote by at least a month, saying security worries made campaigning difficult.
Karzai complained on Thursday that his US security detail had not let him stay in Gardez.
After the Kandahar attack, his security was dramatically tightened and he has since rarely been seen in Afghanistan outside his heavily fortified presidential palace, where he is protected by US bodyguards.
Karzai is favorite to win the polls, which analysts say US President George W. Bush is keen to see held on time in the hope of a foreign policy success story ahead of his own re-election bid in November, but security is a major worry.
