Dawood Wafa • Reuters  --  Arab News

JALALABAD, 27 June 2004 — A bomb killed two women working for the UN-Afghan electoral body and wounded nine female poll workers and two children yesterday, in one of the worst attacks on preparations for Afghanistan’s elections.

The Taleban claimed responsibility for the attack, which was a further setback for President Hamid Karzai’s efforts to bring peace to a country US President George W. Bush has described as a role model for Iraq.

The blast destroyed a bus in the eastern city of Jalalabad, which was taking the Afghan women to register voters for the polls scheduled for September, which the Taleban and allied militants have vowed to disrupt.

“We did this because we warned people not to get involved in the election process,” Taleban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi said. “This only strengthens the foundations of the American-backed government.”

He said the guerrillas had also killed two US Marines in an ambush in the eastern province of Kunar on Thursday night, but had released a Turk kidnapped in March while working on a reconstruction project, partly because he was a Muslim.

UN spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva said two women were killed while three were in critical condition, along with a child who was accompanying his mother. He said nine women suffered lighter injuries.

Earlier, he said a child was also killed in the blast.

Jalalabad police chief Mohammad Younis Noorzai said the bomb was planted inside the minibus. “It was a locally hired van and we have arrested the driver, who was also wounded,” he said.

The UN spokesman said the number of women registering in the eastern region had been rising fast despite traditional restrictions on women’s rights.

“They will not reach their goal,” he said of the attackers.

UN Special Representative Jean Arnault, who this week urged NATO to urgently step up its peacekeeping presence in Afghanistan, said he was “profoundly outraged”.

The attack was just the latest on the voter registration process and an upsurge in militant violence in the run-up to the polls has raised doubts as to whether they can be held on time.

About 4.5 million of nearly 10 million eligible voters have registered, but the process has been slowed in the south and east by militant violence. Female registration has lagged, partly due to problems recruiting female workers.

The attack came just after Karzai appealed to NATO on Friday to honor its pledge to send more troops to protect the presidential and parliamentary polls.