Suspected militants kill seven Afghans
(AP)
Updated: 2005-09-14 19:10

Suspected Taliban rebels fatally shot seven Afghans carrying voter registration cards just days ahead of landmark elections, a senior official said Wednesday, the Associated Press reported.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai delivers a speech during a meeting with civil society representatives as part of the campaign for the forthcoming parliamentary elections, in the western Afghan city of Herat, Tuesday Sept. 13, 2005. Karzai urged voters to support honest candidates in landmark legislative elections this weekend, and also called on the international community not to turn its back on his war-shattered nation after the polls, saying more foreign aid was needed. [AP]

The bodies of seven men were found in the central Afghan province of Uruzgan on Tuesday, along with the cards that entitle them to vote in Sunday's parliamentary and provincial elections.

Provincial Gov. Jan Mohammed Khan blamed Taliban rebels and said militants had launched similar attacks before last year's presidential elections.

"The Taliban are doing these terrorist activities and killing innocent Muslims. I don't know what kind of Muslims they are, finding voter cards and killing Muslims," Khan said.

He said police were investigating.

Supporters of the former ruling Taliban oppose the elections, the next key step in Afghanistan's transition to democracy after two decades of war.

Fighting has left more than 1,200 people dead in the past six months, including five candidates and four election workers.

The U.S. military and NATO peacekeepers have boosted their forces and say rebel threats won't stop the vote.

U.S.-led coalition and Afghan forces on Tuesday clashed with Taliban militants in the Shinkay district of the volatile southern province of Zabul, killing three suspected rebels and arresting another rebel who was injured in the fighting, said district chief Wazir Khan.

Meanwhile, suspected Taliban militants killed a man who worked for Afghan intelligence on Tuesday in Khake district of southern Zabul province, said district chief Ghulam Haider.

Ali Khail, spokesman for the Zabul governor, said coalition and Afghan forces had tightened security in the province ahead of the election and were checking every vehicle on the main road linking the capital Kabul and the main southern city of Kandahar.

In the eastern province of Nangahar, Afghan forces arrested five suspected militants, three of them Pakistanis, as they traveled in a car Tuesday through Khogyani district.

The army and police gave conflicting accounts of the arrests.

Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Mohammed Saher Azimi said the men were posing as journalists and had explosives hidden inside cameras along with a remote control device.

However, the Nangahar police chief, Khalil Ziay, said the men, two Afghans and three Pakistanis, claimed to be businessmen on a trip to sell chewing gum. He said the men had three cameras, but denied explosives were found inside.

Four years ago, Ahmed Shah Masood, the head of the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance that fought the former ruling Taliban regime, was killed by two suspected al-Qaida assassins posing as journalists who had planted explosives inside a camera.

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