Taliban attacks kill at least 22

Taliban militants killed at least 22 security forces, including a district police chief, in separate attacks on security checkpoints in two Afghan provinces, officials said yesterday, ahead of parliamentary elections set for this week.

The Taliban have ramped up attacks in strategic provinces in their battle to expel foreign forces, topple the Western-backed government and restore their version of hardline Islamic law.

The police chief of Mizan, a district in southern Zabul province, was killed in armed clashes with Taliban insurgents on Saturday night, the provincial governor, Rahmatullah Yarmal, said.

In the western province of Farah, Taliban fighters killed 21 troops at two checkpoints in the district of Posht-e Rud.

The Taliban captured 11 soldiers and seized their weapons, added Gul Ahmad Faqiri, a member of the Farah provincial council.

The hardline Islamist militant group claimed the attacks.

"Our fighters have killed the police chief and 25 Afghan soldiers in two provinces on Saturday night," its spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahidhe, said in a statement.

Meanwhile, the death toll from Saturday's blast at an election rally has risen to at least 22 people, officials said yesterday, as the country braces for more violence ahead of the October 20 poll.

A motorcycle carrying explosives detonated among supporters of Nazifa Yousefibek, a female candidate for the northeastern province of Takhar, provincial governor spokesman Mohammad Jawad Hejri told AFP.

Most of the 22 killed and 36 wounded were civilians, he said.

Also on Saturday, in the western province of Herat, two gunmen attacked the campaign office of a candidate in Injeel district, killing two people, provincial governor spokesman Jailani Farhad said. A nine-year-old boy and a security guard died in the attack and two others were wounded.

Violence related to the long-delayed legislative vote has killed or wounded hundreds of people in recent months.

At least nine candidates have died so far, most of them in targeted killings, according to the Independent Election Commission.

Last week the Taliban ordered Afghans to boycott the elections, set for Oct 20, saying the United States was using them for the sole purpose of legitimising its authority and presence in the country.