Taliban bomb NATO trucks

Afghan presidential hopeful stops electoral cooperation

An Afghan policeman stands guard near the scene of an attack in Torkham, Nangarhar province, Afghanistan, Thursday, June 19, 2014. Afghan officials say three Taliban suicide bombers targeted NATO fuel trucks at the border with Pakistan, setting off a gunbattle with police guards. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)
An Afghan policeman stands guard near the scene of an attack in Torkham, Nangarhar province, Afghanistan, Thursday, June 19, 2014. Afghan officials say three Taliban suicide bombers targeted NATO fuel trucks at the border with Pakistan, setting off a gunbattle with police guards. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Taliban bombers struck NATO fuel trucks at a key border crossing between Afghanistan and Pakistan on Thursday.

The attack set off explosions that destroyed dozens of trucks and triggered a gunbattle with police guards that left all three attackers dead, officials said.

The attack underscored the instability plaguing the country and the danger to the U.S.-led mission in Afghanistan as combat forces prepare to withdraw by the end of this year.

Western officials had hoped a peaceful transfer of authority to a new president in democratic elections would ease the transition, but allegations of fraud in the Saturday runoff vote have plunged the country into a new political crisis.

Abdullah Abdullah, who is running against Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, said Thursday that the Independent Electoral Commission had ignored his call to stop the ballot counting and other demands so he will not resume cooperation with the panel or its affiliated complaints commission.

"We will not consider those two institutions as legitimate from now onward because of their disregard of the legitimate demands of us on behalf of millions of people of Afghanistan," he said.

Abdullah acknowledged concerns that the crisis could further destabilize the country but said the responsibility for that lies with the commissions, which were appointed by outgoing President Hamid Karzai.

Abdullah, a former foreign minister who won the first round April 5 but failed to gain the majority needed to avoid a runoff, said his campaign monitors had recorded ballot box stuffing and other irregularities.

He announced Wednesday that he was suspending cooperation with the electoral commissions and demanded that the head of the electoral commission, Zia ul-Haq Amarkhail, be suspended for alleged ballot tampering. Election commission spokesman Noor Mohammad Noor said Wednesday that an investigation had been carried out, and the case was being decided by the complaints commission.

Preliminary results are not due until July 2, followed by final results July 22, according to the official timetable. Electoral officials have said they would release partial results before that but have not yet done so.

The winner will replace Karzai, the only leader the country has known since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion that ousted the Taliban. He was constitutionally barred from seeking a third term.

Ahmadzai, a former finance minister and World Bank official, has not spoken on Abdullah's announcement, but his spokesmen have said it was a violation of a code of conduct signed by both candidates who agreed to cooperate with the electoral commissions. His campaign has joined the international community in urging patience and respect for the process.

The U.S. is watching carefully, eager to get a security agreement signed after announcing it would leave 9,800 U.S. troops in Afghanistan at the end of this year to continue training the Afghans and conduct counterterrorism missions. That number would be cut in half by the end of 2015, and most of the remainder would leave by the end of 2016.

In Washington at a Senate hearing on Afghanistan on Wednesday, the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan James Dobbins counseled patience in light of the contention over the second-round vote, saying it would be several weeks before the outcome would be clear.

Dobbins said there was "significant" fraud in the first round of voting and "almost certainly" in the second round. But, he added that mechanisms for challenging and dealing with the fraud "have to be given a chance to work."

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid claimed responsibility for the attack in the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar, which border police spokesman Idris Momand said began before dawn and left 37 NATO trucks destroyed in explosions set off by a gunbattle between the militants and the guards.

All three Taliban bombers, who targeted a parking lot of the NATO outpost near the Torkham border crossing, were killed. Most NATO cargo shipments go through the Torkham crossing, toward Pakistan's port city of Karachi.

The international coalition said several vehicles were damaged in the attack but no NATO casualties were reported. It added that the attack was under investigation.

In other violence, Kandahar provincial government spokesman Dawakhan Minapal said a former senior official was shot to death Thursday in a drive-by shooting that targeted him in front of his house.

Information for this article was contributed by Mirwais Khan and Deb Riechmann of The Associated Press.

A Section on 06/20/2014

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