KABUL, 19 July 2005 — Suspected Taleban militants shot and wounded an Afghan woman registering voters in northeast Afghanistan, officials said yesterday.
The attack occurred in Kamdesh district of remote Nuristan province some 210 kilometers northeast of Kabul on Sunday.
The electoral worker was wounded “in an armed attack by the enemies of peace and stability,” Interior Ministry spokesman Lutfullah Mashal told AFP, referring to remnants of the ousted Taleban regime.
The UN-backed Afghan Joint Electoral Management Body (JEMB) confirmed the incident saying it was trying to send a helicopter for medical evacuation.
“A female district field coordinator (DFC) was in a group of people 2.5 kilometers away from the registration site - three men fired 30 rounds at this group of people. The female DFC was the only one to be wounded in this group,” JEMB spokeswoman Bronwyn Curran said.
“People took her to the nearby house for basic medical treatment, we are trying to get a helicopter down today to evacuate her to Jalalabad,” she said.
In another incident in eastern Nangarhar province a police investigation officer was wounded in an attack on his residence in Dur Bala district on Sunday, said Mashal.
Police in the main southern city of Kandahar recovered six rockets Sunday and defused them, the spokesman said.
Afghan troops on Sunday also arrested two local Taleban commanders in Shawali Kot district of Kandahar province, Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Mohammed Zahir Azimi told AFP. They also seized a satellite telephone and documents, he said.
More than three years after their ouster by a US-led campaign, the Taleban have stepped up attacks in southern and eastern Afghanistan ahead of parliamentary elections in September.
Meanwhile, UN official said yesterday that despite considerable changes in the lives of Afghan women since the fall of Taleban, violence against women remains dramatic in its intensity and pervasiveness in both the public and private spheres of life.
At a press conference UN Rapporteur Yakin Erturk charged that forced child marriages was the primary source of violence against women in Afghanistan.
Her remarks came after a 10-day tour of three Afghan provinces, including the southern province of Kandahar.
“In addition to being in themselves serious forms of violence, forced and child marriages in combination with polygamy considerably increase the likelihood that women will be subjected to violence with the family, including sexual violence by significantly older males,” she said. “For the great majority of girls and women there is no alternative to enduring the violence they encounter. Unaccompanied women have no place in the public space, and are automatically suspected of being engaged in sexual offences,” Erturk said.
If Afghan girls and women turn to police or the judiciary for protection and redress, they are likely to face abuse and be handed back to the abusive environment, she said.
