GI death adds to bloody August

KABUL, Afghanistan — A roadside bomb and gunfire attack killed a U.S. serviceman in southern Afghanistan on Thursday, a death that pushed August into a tie with July as the deadliest months of the eight-year war.

The death brought to 44 the number of U.S. troops who have died in Afghanistan this month with four days left in August.

Meanwhile, Afghan presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah said he won't takepart in a power-sharing deal with incumbent Hamid Karzai, if that means accepting what he views as a fraudulent election.

"I don't find a place for myself in this mafia-type system," Abdullah said Wednesday in Kabul. He spoke hours after the Independent Election Commission said Karzai had widened his lead, 45 percent to 35 percent for Abdullah, with about 17 percent of votes counted. The next partial results are expected Saturday. The updated returns suggested a turnout of about 6 million voters, compared with 8 million in the 2004 election.

More than 60,000 U.S. troops are in Afghanistan to fight rising insurgent violence. The number of roadside bombs deployed by militants across the country has skyrocketed, and U.S. forces have moved into new and deadlier areas this summer, in part to help secure the country's presidential election.

The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan released his new counterinsurgency strategy Thursday, telling troops that the supply of militants is "effectively endless" and that U.S. and NATO forces need to see the country through the eyes of its villagers.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal said troops "must change the way that we think, act and operate." McChrystal hopes to install a new approach to counterinsurgency where troops will make the safety of villagers the top priority, above killing an endless supply of militants.

"An insurgency cannot be defeated by attrition; its supply of fighters, and even leadership, is effectively endless," the new guidelines said.

Violence is on the rise in Afghanistan even as it falls in Iraq, where nearly twice as many U.S. troops are still based. Five U.S. troops have died in Iraq this month, three fewer than in July.

A statement from the NATO led force in Kabul said the U.S. serviceman died in southern Afghanistan when a patrol responded to a bombing and gunfire attack. No other details were released. Militants unleashed a wave of attacks in southern Afghanistan last week that helped suppress voter turnout there.

Abdullah said he "will not accept the outcome" if Karzai is declared the victor, unless election authorities resolve the growing mass of formal reports of fraud, which total 1,915, according to Ahmed Muslim Khuram, a spokesman for the Electoral Complaints Commission.

Local and provincial government and electoral officials helped conduct a "state-engineered fraud," stuffing ballot boxes for Karzai and discarding voting papers marked for other candidates, he said.

Abdullah's camp also has been accused of fraud in the election.

"I was a witness to fraud and I couldn't do anything to stop it," said a woman election monitor at a voting site in Balkh province, who spoke on condition of anonymity. She said her fellow staff members voted at least 100 times for Abdullah and forced other residents to make the same choice. "I was really upset. The voting system was not good. People didn't have the right to choose."

At least one polling center was set ablaze, destroying all records, and a young election supervisor was gunned down while driving with boxes of ballots, according to the top provincial election official, Dur Mohammad.

Another candidate, former anti-drug official Mirwais Yasini, personally delivered boxes full of shredded ballots to the foreign led Election Complaints Commission. Yasini and five other candidates issued a joint statement this week saying the election was marred by "widespread fraud and intimidation" that threatened to "increase tension and violence in the country."

Complaints of fraud have spiked, with 1,448 received in the week since polling day on Aug. 20, and "most of them are from ordinary citizens, instead of candidates" or their campaign teams, Khuram said.

Abdullah's campaign has filed more than 200 reports of voting fraud with the United Nations backed Electoral Complaints Commission, he said. "We have faith in the integrity of the commission," in which three of five members were named by the U.N. secretary-general's office, "but we will need to see its capabilities in dealing with so many cases," Abdullah said.

The election-monitoring team from the Washington-based National Democratic Institute said in an Aug. 22 statement that the complaints panel, formed four months ago, got too little time to hire and train adequate staff. The commission has 250 staff members to investigate the fraud reports and is heavily burdened, Khuram said.

Karzai and Abdullah have denied accusations that their followers committed systematic fraud.

In announcing results, the election commission gave no geographical breakdown of the vote, leaving it unclear whether Karzai is likely to surpass the 50 percent threshold to avoid a runoff election.

Meanwhile, U.S. and Afghan forces battled Taliban militants at a medical center in eastern Afghanistan after a Taliban commander sought treatment there, and a U.S. helicopter gunship fired on the clinic after militants put up resistance.

Reports of the militant death toll from Wednesday's firefight varied widely. The spokesman for the governor of Paktika province said 12 militants died, while police said two were killed. It wasn't clear why the tolls differed.

The fighting began after a wounded Taliban commander sought treatment at a clinic in the Sar Hawza district of Paktika. Afghan forces went to the center and got in a firefight with militants. U.S. forces later provided backup.

Hamidullah Zhwak, the governor's spokesman, said the Taliban commander was wounded Aug. 20. Militants took him and three other wounded Taliban to the clinic Wednesday. Afghan forces were tipped off to their presence and soon arrived at the scene, he said.

Insurgent snipers fired from a tower near the clinic, and troops called in an airstrike from U.S. forces, Zhwak said. Fighting between about 20 militants and Afghan and U.S. forces lasted about five hours, and 12 Taliban were killed, he said.

A U.S. military spokesman, Lt. Cmdr. Christine Sidenstricker, said the clinic's doctor gave U.S. troops permission to fire on the clinic. After the battle, Afghan and U.S. forces met with villagers and discussed rebuilding the clinic, a U.S. summary of the meeting said.

Villagers expressed "disgust" that militants used the medical center to fire from and that they understood that the action by Afghan and coalition forces was necessary, the summary said.

Seven insurgents - including the wounded commander - had been detained, the U.S. statement said.

Information for this article was contributed by Jason Straziuso of The Associated Press; by Joshua Partlow and Pamela Constable of The Washington Post; and by James Rupert of Bloomberg News.