Kandahar, Afghanistan — Suspected Taliban fighters killed up to 16 men after learning they had registered for Afghanistan's U.S.-backed national elections, the deadliest attack yet in a campaign aimed at sabotaging the country's first free vote, officials said Sunday.
The assault raised security fears and added to doubts over whether Afghanistan is ready to hold elections as planned in September, and increased pressure on NATO leaders meeting Monday in Turkey to deploy more peacekeepers here.
The killings took place Friday on a road in southern Uruzgan province and various reports put the number of dead at 10 or 16. News of the deaths emerged a day after a bomb ripped through a bus carrying female election workers in the eastern city of Jalalabad, killing two of them and wounding 13. A spokesman for the Taliban claimed responsibility.
Time is running out for the joint UN-Afghan electoral authority to decide on the polling date if the election is to be held according to schedule.
An Afghan registers voters Sunday in a village 50 kilometres north of Kabul. (Emilio Morenatti/AP)
According to the electoral law, the date must be announced 90 days beforehand, meaning by July 2, if polling takes place on the last day of September.
The Uruzgan attack, which left between 10 and 16 people dead, underscored the risks faced by Afghans if they want to exercise their democratic rights, particularly in lawless areas of the country, plagued by Taliban-led insurgents who have threatened more attacks against election workers and voters.
Rozi Khan, the Uruzgan police chief, said assailants stopped a van carrying 12 men on a road about 30 kilometres from the provincial capital, Tirin Kot.
When the gunmen searched their documents and found that they had registered to vote, they opened fire. Two men escaped and alerted police, who found the 10 bodies but have made no arrests.
Obaidullah Khan, the top political administrator of the victims' home district of Uruzgan, confirmed the attack but said 16 people had died, and only one man had survived.
It was impossible to immediately account for the discrepancy.
Obaidullah Khan said six or seven attackers had launched the assault, while others hid in rocks nearby.
Both Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the U.S. military are adamant the election can stick to schedule, although with only three days left for voter registration, only about half of eligible people have signed up countrywide.
UN spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva said Sunday he expected the electoral authority to extend in some areas of the country the end-of-June deadline for registration, to address regional and gender imbalances in the electoral rolls.
Just over five million voters have signed up so far, and only about one-third of them are women. Remote, Pashtun-dominated areas where insurgents are most active are lagging behind other regions.
