Election preparations continue despite murder of election worker

Preparations for the upcoming parliamentary elections in Afghanistan will continue despite the murder of an election worker in Trin Kot, the provincial capital of the southern Uruzgan province, the country's Joint Electoral Management Body (JEMB) announced on Monday in the capital, Kabul.

The dead person was a 19-year-old civic instructor employed by the Afghanistan Development Association (ADA) and was the first election worker killed in the 2005 parliamentary election process.

"It is a sad incident for all election workers but our people in the field, the JEMB secretariat and also our partners are committed to continue the work in all the provinces," Sultan Ahmad Baheen, a spokesman for JEMB, told IRIN in Kabul.

According to the Afghan NGOs Safety Office (ANSO), approximately 10 unknown assailants, believed to be members of the Taliban, opened fire on the victim and his father as they were leaving the village mosque on Friday. The man died on the spot and his father was injured.

The incident followed a recent bomb attack on a demining agency vehicle in southern Helmand province on the Kandahar-Herat highway construction site which killed two deminers and injured another five.

On Wednesday at least 20 people were killed and 50 injured when a suicide bomber blew himself up in a mosque in the southern city of Kandahar during a mourning ceremony. Wednesday's mosque bombing followed the assassination of a religious leader in Kandahar last Monday. The Taliban claimed responsibility for both of the incidents in Kandahar.

The Taliban and other insurgents have stepped up attacks following a winter lull in fighting. More than 10 aid workers have so far been killed over the past few months.

During 2004, the presidential election year, ANSO said 24 aid workers along with 13 election workers were killed.

"We will have more killings of aid workers this year than previous years and we are quite certain those working within the election process will be more exposed to this [type of] attack," Nick Downie, head of ANSO, warned.

The slain election worker was involved in a project educating villagers on how to cast their vote in Uruzgan province's Trin Kot district. Reports said that he had been warned a few days earlier about an attack, while local elders had advised that women working in civic education would not be safe, Downie added.

The killing of the election worker came after a successful candidate nomination process throughout the country. According to JEMB, the nominations phase in Afghanistan's forthcoming parliamentary elections has met with enormous enthusiasm. More than 6,000 Afghans have registered to stand in the historic 18 September legislature and provincial council elections.