by Rachel Morarjee
KABUL, Aug 8 (AFP) - Afghanistan marked a weekend of bloody violence with two US soldiers and their Afghan interpreter killed in the second deadly attack in as many days in the country`s troubled south, as insurgency worsened just weeks ahead of presidential elections.
The three were killed and another US soldier was wounded when their vehicle hit an explosive device Saturday in the southeastern province of Ghazni, 245 kilometers (151 miles) south of the capital Kabul, the US-led coalition said in a statement.
The wounded soldier was flown to Kandahar airfield hospital for medical treatment and was listed in stable condition, it added.
The attack followed the killing of two electoral workers in neighbouring Uruzgan province Friday, who died when travelling near the village of Yakhdan in Shahi Hassas district where they were working on voter registration.
Militants attacked the four-car convoy as dusk was beginning to fall, destroying all the vehicles, leaving one person still missing and bringing to 12 the total number of election workers killed since May.
Both provinces are strongholds for loyalists from the ousted Taliban regime, which was toppled from power in 2001 but has since made a resurgence, waging a guerrilla war on both US-led and Afghan government forces, aid and electoral workers in the south of the country.
A man identifying himself as the spokesman for the Taliban, Abdul Latif Hakimi, claimed responsibility for both attacks in phonecalls to AFP from an undisclosed location.
The Taliban have vowed to disrupt the country`s first presidential polls scheduled for October 9 through violence and are increasingly targetting their fire against unarmed aid workers and other soft targets.
Two Afghan staff with German aid agency Malteser were gunned down in southeastern Paktia province on Tuesday prompting the United Nations High Commission for Refugees to freeze all their movements across the south and southeast of the country.
Over 30 aid workers have been killed in the last 18 months in the country, with award-winning aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres pulling out of Afghanistan in July after five of their staff were slain in a shooting a month earlier.
"The enemies of Afghanistan are killing innocent non-combatants. This is a premeditated strategy to derail the progress of peace," US-led coalition spokesman Major Scott Nelson said Saturday.
Security has deteriorated so badly that Nelson suggested aid workers consider travelling with armed escorts in some of the most strife-hit parts of the country.
"I don`t know what they can really do other than think about providing some sort of security for themselves," he said.
"I know that is a difficult task and some would say `that`s against our mission,` but the environment is such that non-combatants are being attacked."
Aid workers angrily refuted that armed escorts would make them safer, pointing to escalating attacks on electoral workers who travel with armed escorts.
Presidential polls were delayed twice because of the security situation while the parliamentary vote has been pushed back to the following April to allow the government time to stem the rising tide of violence.
Despite the violence Afghans have been enthusiastic about the polls with over 9.1 million people registering to vote as of August 3, United Nations spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva said Sunday.
Some 41.4 percent of them were women, he added.
"Afghans are telling us... we have concerns over security but we want to see elections take place," he said.
However, voter registration has been markedly lower in the south and southeast of the country where attacks by Taliban loyalists have been worst.