Taliban steps up election terror campaign

Suicide attack on Nato convoy kills 10 as violence sweeps Afghanistan before poll

(AP)

A Taliban suicide bomb attack on a Nato convoy killed at least 10 people, including one international soldier and two UN staff yesterday. Mortar rounds landed inside the grounds of the presidential palace as Islamists unleashed a wave of violence highlighting the volatile Afghan security situation on the eve of national elections.

The suicide truck attack on one of the main roads from Kabul leading east to Jalalabad, near a British military base, also injured 52 people, at least a dozen of them seriously. A Nato spokesman said a number of its soldiers "were killed and injured in the blast". Further details would be released after next of kin had been informed, he said.

Two Afghan civilians working for the UN were among the dead and another was wounded. The UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon said he was "deeply distressed" by the news. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the bombing and declared that further attacks would soon follow.

The attack set a row of vehicles on fire and damaged nearby buildings. British troops, guarding the site of the attack, had to collect remains of victims from the roofs of nearby buildings. Local people searched through the rubble for survivors who were ferried to hospitals in private cars.

There were no injuries in the mortar attack aimed at the residence of the President Hamid Karzai. Hamid Elmi, a presidential spokesman, said the rounds had struck "around the compound" but had no further details.

A US military spokeswoman, Elizabeth Mathias, had no details of damage or casualties from the attack on the presidential compound. Neither Mr Karzai nor anyone else was wounded in the attack, said Mr Elmi. He said the rounds probably hit "somewhere around the compound", but he had no further details.

In separate attacks, two American soldiers were killed and three others were wounded by a roadside bomb in eastern Afghanistan. The deaths brought to 26 the number of US service members killed in the conflict in the past 30 days. Meanwhile, a suicide attack killed three Afghan soldiers and two civilians in Uruzgan in the south of the country. In Jowzjan province in the north, an election candidate was shot dead and three poll workers killed in Badakshan when the car they were travelling in hit a roadside bomb.