A deputy to US-backed President Hamid Karzai escaped a roadside bombing in northern Afghanistan, just four days after Karzai himself was targeted as he tried to hit the campaign trail for landmark Oct. 9 elections.
Meanwhile, two US soldiers and several militants were killed in firefights in the volatile southeast Monday, further underlining fragile security ahead of the vote.
Nayiamatullah Shahrani, one of four Afghan vice presidents, and Urban Development Minister Gul Agha Sherzai were on their way to inspect a road project in northern Kunduz province when the explosion rocked their convoy Monday, police said.
The remote-controlled bomb, hidden at a roadside in Khanabad district, damaged a car in the 20-vehicle convoy that was carrying Shahrani's bodyguards, slightly hurting one of them with flying glass, Police Chief Mutaleb Beg said.
Beg blamed "enemies" for the attack, but didn't elaborate. No one was immediately arrested. The incident was confirmed by an aide to Karzai -- who was in New York for this week's UN annual session of the General Assembly.
On Thursday, Karzai aborted his first major campaign event when suspected Taliban fired a rocket at the US military helicopter carrying him to a school opening in southeastern Afghanistan.
No one was hurt in that attack, but it underscored the threat against Karzai and his US-backed government in the face of a stubborn Taliban-led insurgency.
More than 900 people, including 12 election workers, have died in political violence across Afghanistan so far this year, and officials are braced for more bloodshed in the run-up to the balloting -- Afghanistan's first direct presidential vote, supposed to cap the three-year international drive to stabilize the war-torn country.
Most of the violence has come in the south and east, where the US military reported four separate skirmishes Monday.
The two US soldiers were killed in a firefight with insurgents in Paktika, a lawless province where al-Qaeda fighters as well as Taliban rebels are believed to operate.
Two other Americans were slightly wounded and six Afghan government troops were evacuated to a US base for treatment, a military statement said.
The names of the dead were not immediately released.
According to the US Defense Department, 137 US military personnel have died during Operation Enduring Freedom, launched after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the US.
At least 99 of the fatalities have been in or around Afghanistan, and 54 have been troops killed in action.
In Zabul province, a focus of the insurgency neighboring Paktika, US-led forces killed several militants in a clash north the provincial capital, Qalat.
Coalition forces also came under fire near Deh Rawood, a town in Uruzgan province where American forces maintain a base, and in another unspecified location.
One more Afghan soldier was injured, the statement said. No other coalition casualties were reported.
US and Afghan officials believe that militants are able to slip back and forth over the porous Pakistani border to mount attacks in Afghanistan, and the US military said Monday it believed rebel leaders were holding strategy meetings there.
"Relatively high-ranking" members of the Taliban, al-Qaeda and followers of renegade Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar have held "several meetings" in Pakistan, US spokesman Major Scott Nelson said.
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