UN condemns attack on election workers

The United Nations has expressed outrage over Saturday's fatal attack against female staff members of the Secretariat of the Joint Electoral Management Body (JEMB) on the outskirts of Jalalabad, the capital of Afghanistan's eastern Nangarhar province. The women were working to register female voters in the east for the upcoming national elections. "The reason behind these kind of attacks needs to be addressed, but it would not have a negative impact on the registration and election process," Manoel de Almeida e Silva, a spokesman for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), told IRIN in the Afghan capital, Kabul. Speaking on Sunday, he said: "The [UN] Special Representative sends his deepest condolences to the families, friends and colleagues of those who were killed and he wishes the prompt recovery of those who were wounded." The incident occurred when an explosion ripped through a locally hired mini-bus transporting the electoral staff as they were beginning their voter registration activities on Saturday morning in the district of Rodad, in Nangarhar province. According to UNAMA on Monday, the explosives were placed in the mini-bus, killing two women and a child and injuring 12 others, including three women critically. As a temporary precaution, while the situation was being assessed and further security measures taken, the electoral authorities have restricted the movement of the Secretariat's female staff while the registration of women continues wherever possible. Manoel maintained that, without exception, the message that he had received from the people of Nangarhar was that they were very sad at what had happened on Saturday, but that the incident would not be an obstacle for residents to participate in the electoral process. UNAMA confirmed that Afghan President Hamid Karzai had been in contact with Jean Arnault, UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG), to express his concern and support, and that the SRSG had also met JEMB Chairman Zakim Shah and the director of the JEMB Secretariat, Farooq Wardak, to review measures to be taken following the incident. The eastern region is second only to the Kabul region in voter registration with close to 600,000 registered voters. Some 35 percent of them are women with their numbers rising fast, in spite of well-known cultural limitations. Commenting on the death of the two women, Arnault remarked in Kabul: "Their killers probably wanted to stop this momentum towards broad female participation. They will not reach their goal." UNAMA has sent a team of doctors and nurses from Kabul to support the Jalalabad hospital staff who are taking care of the wounded, while those critically injured have been evacuated to Kabul from Jalalabad by helicopter.