KABUL, Aug 28: Taliban fighters on Saturday shot dead a parliamentary candidate amid a spate of violence that has raised security fears ahead of Afghanistan’s elections.
The killing of Haji Atiqullah, who intended to contest in the Sept 18 provincial and parliamentary elections as a candidate for a new lower house of parliament, was accompanied by a rocket-propelled grenade fired at a German peacekeeping base and the wounding of three US soldiers in an attack near Kabul.
“The Taliban killed him,” Jan Mohammad Khan, governor of the troubled southern province of Uruzgan, said on Sunday, adding that Haji Atiqullah’s driver and bodyguard were wounded.
A spokesman for the Taliban said Taliban fighters had killed Atiqullah.
President Hamid Karzai said the tide of violence would not deter the Afghan people from holding the elections and that he was confident the elections would go smoothly.
“We are very sure that the election will take place peacefully,” Mr Karzai said at a news conference with visiting Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Haji Atiqullah was travelling home in a convoy on Saturday after campaigning, an election commission spokeswoman said, adding it was not clear if he was the intended target or if his convoy was mistaken for someone else’s.
In the town of Faizabad, unidentified attackers fired a rocket-propelled grenade into a base used by German peacekeepers on Saturday. Taliban insurgents are not known to be active in that part of the country.
“The rocket failed to explode properly. There were no casualties,” said a spokesman for NATO-led peacekeeping force.
Three US soldiers were wounded in an attack on their convoy east of Kabul on Friday, the US military said.—Reuters
