Politician, US troops killed in Afghan attacks

Seven US soldiers and a candidate for Afghanistan's September polls were killed in a wave of weekend attacks, officials said Sunday as police found the bodies of five campaign workers.

Two American soldiers were killed Sunday in separate attacks, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in a statement.

The other five troops were killed in other militant activities in the violence-wracked south and east of the country, which has hardest hit by the Taliban-led insurgency now reaching the end of its ninth year.

International troops have suffered escalating casualties as they step up the fight against a Taliban insurgency that has become increasingly deadly since the militants were ousted from power in a US-led invasion in late 2001.

The number of foreign soldiers killed in the Afghan war so far this year has reached 472, according to the independent www.icasualties.org website.

There are about 141,000 US and NATO troops deployed in Afghanistan to fight the insurgency and protect the US-backed government of President Hamid Karzai.

Afghanistan is due to hold its second post-Taliban parliamentary elections September 18 amid fears that attacks by the Taliban might disrupt the vote.

Candidate Abdul Manan, running for a seat in the western province of Herat, was shot dead Saturday in an attack blamed on the militants.

The Taliban are accused of being responsible for the deaths of two other candidates since the launch of the election campaign in early July.

Police Sunday also found the bodies of five members of the campaign team of female candidate Fawzya Galani, days after 10 of them were abducted by the Taliban, officials said.

AFP