Taliban insurgents killed seven people in Afghanistan after finding them with voter cards for Sundayâs elections, a provincial governor said on Wednesday. Speaking of the seven killed on Tuesday in Uruzgan province, governor Jan Mohammad Khan said, âThey were killed because they were carrying voting cards.â He said the seven had been travelling in a remote district when the attack took place. He gave no further details. A Taliban spokesman said the insurgents had carried out the latest killings, saying the seven were policemen and included a commander. He denied that they had been targeted because they were carrying voting cards. âWe killed seven policemen in Gezaab, not voters,â said spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi. Violence has surged in the run-up to the elections, with more than 1,000 people killed, most of them militants but including 49 US troops. About 20,000 US troops and 10,000 NATO-led peacekeepers are providing security for the elections along with tens of thousands of government police and troops.
Hakimi said that Taliban fighters had also killed a man in neighbouring Zabul province because he was a spy for the Americans. Police confirmed the killing but said the victim was an ordinary civilian, not a spy. In another attack in Zabul, three Taliban and a policeman were killed in a clash after insurgents opened fire on a joint US-Afghan patrol. No American soldiers were hurt, a provincial official said. In the northern province of Balkh, an explosion destroyed a newly built school, a provincial official said. It was not known who was behind the blast but the official said he believed the school had been a target because it was to have been used as a polling station on Sunday.