KABUL, Aug 3: Insurgents have killed four Afghan government troops and four police officers in an attack on a checkpoint in the country’s east, an interior ministry spokesman said on Wednesday. Elsewhere, gunfire killed five civilians and an Afghan election staffer was shot dead in the latest violence to hit the country ahead of next month’s landmark polls.

“A group of 50 terrorists attacked a checkpost in Kamdesh district of Nuristan province in which four soldiers and four police were killed yesterday evening,” interior ministry spokesman Lutfullah Mashal said on Wednesday.

Insurgents loyal to the ousted Taliban regime have recently stepped up their attacks on Afghan troops and the 19,000-strong US-led coalition force as Afghanistan approaches its first parliamentary polls in nearly 30 years.

The attack late Tuesday on the checkpoint took place about 220 kilometres northeast of the capital Kabul, the spokesman said. Separately, Mr Mashal said, five civilians were killed on Tuesday in a part of eastern Laghman province where a roadside bomb blast had targeted but missed a US military convoy.

“I can confirm that five civilians were killed in a shootout in Laghman province yesterday, but it is not yet clear how the shootout took place or if coalition forces were involved.” Mr Mashal said.

“One of the five was a woman, and it took place in Ali Shing district of Laghman province.” An Afghan official said US forces had shot dead the civilians.

The claim could not be independently verified and a spokesman for the US-led coalition, Lieutenant Colonel Jerry O’Hara, said: “We don’t have such a report”. Also on Tuesday, suspected militants shot dead an Afghan election worker — the fifth to die violently this year — in the country’s south, an official said.

Gunmen on a motorcycle killed Abdul Qayoom, who worked for the Joint Electoral Management Body, said Helmand deputy governor Haji Mohayudin and election officials in Kandahar.

Four suspects had been arrested after the election worker’s killing in Lashkar Gah, Helmand province, 550 kilometres south of Kabul, said Mohayudin, but it was not clear whether the Taliban were behind the attack.—AFP