The Taliban yesterday for the first time threatened to attack polling stations directly, stepping up warnings for Afghans to boycott landmark elections this week.
The threat was made in leaflets pinned up and dropped in villages of southern Afghanistan, which were authenticated by a Taliban spokesman.
The text varied slightly in language, attributed to different local commanders in a region considered the main Taliban stronghold in the country.
PHOTO: REUTERS
“This is to inform respected residents that you must not participate in the elections so as not to become a victim of our operations, because we will use new tactics,” a leaflet distributed in Kandahar said.
“We are using new tactics targeting election centers. If anyone is harmed in and around election centers, they will be responsible because we have informed them in advance,” Taliban spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi said.
Meanwhile, a British soldier wounded in an explosion in Afghanistan died on Saturday, the defense ministry said, bringing the country’s military death toll there to 200.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called the grim milestone “deeply tragic news.”
The Ministry of Defense said the soldier from 2nd Battalion the Royal Welsh died on Saturday at a military hospital in England.
He had been wounded in a blast while on vehicle patrol on Thursday in Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan. Three other British troops were killed by roadside bombs in a separate incident in Afghanistan the same day.
Britain has about 9,000 troops in Afghanistan, most based in Helmand, a center of Taliban insurgents.
The British military suffered 22 fatalities last month, its bloodiest month since the invasion of Afghanistan in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Nine British troops have been killed so far this month.
The rising toll — more than the 179 personnel who died in Iraq — has reignited a debate in Britain about its role in the war and the quality of its military equipment. The Afghan campaign has long been divisive, with polls showing Britons about evenly split between supporters and opponents of the mission.
Graham Knight, whose son Ben was killed when a Royal Air Force Nimrod plane exploded over Afghanistan in 2006, said it was “time for an end to military action” in Afghanistan.
“We are ill-equipped and ill-advised,” he said. “We should be getting the non-militant Taliban around the table and begin talks so we can embark on a withdrawal.”
The prime minister said the mission to defeat the Taliban was essential to British security because “three-quarters of terrorist plots against Britain come from the border areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan.”
“British troops are fighting bravely there to protect us,” Brown said. “The best way to honor the memory of those who have died is to see that commitment through.”
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