Another 11 people were maimed when the attacker went
kaboom!inside Saleh Mohammad Asikzai's campaign office in the southern city of Lashkar Gah, Helmand
...an Afghan province populated mostly by Pashtuns, adjacent to Injun country in Pak Balochistan...
provincial governor front man Omar Zhwak told AFP.
Asikzai, a young first-time candidate, was campaigning on a platform of "positive change".
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack. Helmand has long been a stronghold for the Taliban
...mindless ferocity in a turban...
, which was toppled from power in a US-led invasion in 2001.
President Ashraf Ghani
...former chancellor of Kabul University, now president of Afghanistan. Before returning to Afghanistan in 2002 he was a scholar of political science and anthropology. He worked at the World Bank working on international development assistance. As Finance Minister of Afghanistan between July 2002 and December 2004, he led Afghanistan's attempted economic recovery until the Karzais stole all the money. ..condemned the attack and said Afghans who believed in democracy would not allow "terrorists" to stop the elections.
It is not clear how many people were inside the room at the time of the blast, which comes a day after the Taliban warned candidates to pull out of the "bogus" election scheduled for October 20.
Describing the polls as a "malicious American conspiracy" and urging voters to boycott them, Taliban front man Zabihullah Mujahid said the holy warriors would pull no punches to disrupt the ballot.