Six Killed in Afghanistan Bomb Blast

A bomb blast Wednesday killed six people, including two United Nations workers registering Afghan voters, in an area of southeast Afghanistan where U.S.-led forces have frequently battled Taliban fighters and their allies.

The attack came on the day that the Nobel Prize-winning aid group, Doctors Without Borders, announced that it was pulling out of Afghanistan, citing factors such as deteriorating security and dissatisfaction with an investigation of the June slaying of five of its staffers in the northwest.

In Wednesday’s violence, employees of the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan were at a mosque in Ghazni province registering voters for the country’s Oct. 9 presidential election when a bomb exploded, killing six people, the U.S.-led military coalition said.

Two U.N. staff members who were injured in the attack were flown by U.N. helicopter to a U.S. military field hospital at Bagram air base, north of Kabul, the military said in a statement.

At least 30 Afghan and foreign aid workers have been killed in Afghanistan this year.

Despite the violence and intimidation, about 7.5 million of an estimated 10 million eligible Afghans have registered to vote. About 40% of them are women.

The election, the country’s first in decades, originally was scheduled for June but was postponed until September, and delayed again until Oct. 9, as officials struggled to deal with logistical challenges and growing security problems.

A total of 23 candidates have registered to run for president, with interim President Hamid Karzai considered the front-runner and former Education Minister Younis Qanooni mounting a last-minute challenge. More complicated parliamentary elections have been postponed until April.

The departure of Doctors Without Borders, or Medecins Sans Frontieres, which has provided service in Afghanistan for more than two decades, is expected to take place within two weeks.

Although the decision serves as another indication of instability in Afghanistan, many other aid groups remain in the country. The U.N. also continues aid work, though it has halted many operations in the southern and eastern regions where the Taliban insurgency remains strongest.

In announcing its withdrawal, Doctors Without Borders accused the U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan of using social aid to carry out what it said was a military “hearts and minds” campaign, a move the group said has put civilian humanitarian workers in harm’s way.

In May, according to the group, coalition forces distributed leaflets in Taliban strongholds of southern Afghanistan that had a picture of an Afghan girl carrying a bag of wheat and called for information on the Taliban or its allies.

Doctors Without Borders said the leaflets made a clear link “between the provision of humanitarian aid and the military aims of the coalition and thereby represent an unacceptable assault on humanitarian principles.”

U.S. and other NATO troops also have set up small units, called Provincial Reconstruction Teams, in several cities and outlying areas to work with local officials and residents to rebuild the country after decades of war.

Civilian aid groups have often complained that the military teams blur the lines between soldiers and humanitarian workers, leaving civilian groups in increased danger of attack by insurgents.

The U.S.-led coalition repeatedly has said that its reconstruction teams are doing crucial work in the multibillion-dollar rebuilding of Afghanistan’s infrastructure.

More than 20,000 troops from the United States and other North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries are in Afghanistan, but insurgent attacks have increased steadily in recent months.

NATO ambassadors meeting Friday in Brussels agreed to send about 2,500 more troops, still short of the 3,500 reinforcements that the alliance has promised to send.

Doctors Without Borders also said Wednesday that it was dissatisfied with the Afghan government’s investigation of the June 2 shooting deaths of five of its staffers -- two Afghans, a Belgian, a Dutchman and a Norwegian.

The workers were traveling in Afghanistan’s northwest Badghis province when they were fired on from several directions, the aid agency said. Grenade shrapnel also was found in their bullet-riddled vehicle, the agency said, adding that it was not a robbery attempt because nothing was stolen from the car.

A purported Taliban spokesman claimed that the hard-line Islamic militia carried out the attack because the workers represented “U.S. interests.” But the Taliban are most active in the south and east of Afghanistan, not in the northwest. Doctors Without Borders said “credible evidence” pointed to local warlords whom Afghan authorities have not arrested.

“Having worked nearly without interruption alongside the most vulnerable Afghan people since 1980, it is with outrage and bitterness that we take the decision to abandon them,” Marine Buissonniere, the group’s secretary-general, said in a statement. “We simply cannot sacrifice the security of our volunteers while warring parties seek to target and kill humanitarian workers.”

The aid group, which has 80 foreign and 1,400 local staff members in Afghanistan, said it would hand over its operations to the country’s health ministry and other agencies.

Doctors Without Borders won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999 for its commitment to helping victims on all sides of conflicts, and for its work in numerous famines and other catastrophes since 1971.