Afghanistan has been hit by a surge of violence weeks ahead of the war-torn country's presidential and provincial council elections on August 20, with international forces flooding in to help secure the landmark polls.

On Sunday, provincial council candidate Jan Mohammad was killed when gunmen attacked him as he campaigned in northern Kunduz province, the provincial governor's spokesman Mahbubullah Saidi said.

Mohammad is the third provincial election candidate to be killed since registration for the polls in May.

Also Sunday, a suicide bomber struck at Torkham, a key border crossing between Afghanistan and Pakistan in Nangarhar province.

"There was a suicide attack on one of our police posts in Torkham. A police officer and policeman have been killed," regional border police commander Mohammad Zaman Mamozai told AFP, adding that another officer was wounded.

The defence ministry meanwhile announced that Afghan commandos backed by international forces and war planes had killed 35 rebels in raids on Taliban hideouts in the southern province of Kandahar on Saturday.

Several other insurgents were wounded in the raids in Shah Wali Kot district in the restive province, the ministry said in a statement.

"The national army commandos having the support of the international forces and air force killed 35 enemies who had massed there to interrupt the people's lives," the statement said.

The recent surge in Taliban-linked violence highlights the threat to Afghanistan's security as it prepares for its second presidential polls.

Thousands of newly deployed US Marines, British forces and Afghan security troops have launched a series of major assaults on Taliban strongholds in southern Afghanistan to try to quell violence ahead of the polls.

The Taliban are the main militant group behind an increasingly deadly insurgency launched shortly after their government was toppled in a US-led invasion in 2001.

earlier related report
Foreign troops die at record rate in Afghan war
  July 2009 has become the deadliest month for foreign troops fighting an eight-year war in Afghanistan, as Taliban guerrillas hone their bombing techniques and Westerners struggle in the harsh climate.

A month before Afghanistan goes to the polls for the second time to elect a head of state, British and US troops are pressing some of the biggest assaults of the war by storming Taliban bases in previously no-go southern areas.

The US military has spoken about pockets of resistance but officials say the British, whose apparent equipment shortages have sparked huge debate at home, have encountered some of the deadliest combat.

The independent website icasualties.org, which calculates military losses in Afghanistan and Iraq, put the number of dead in the Afghan war at 48 so far this July, topping the previous record of 46 in both June and August 2008.

In less than seven months, 204 foreign troops have died in Afghanistan, compared with 294 in the whole of 2008, 232 in 2007 and 191 in 2006.

The top US commander recognised that Taliban militants were now more violent and better organised, warning that troops faced a crucial 18-month battle to help stabilise Afghanistan.

Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the latest operations in southern Helmand province were only "just beginning", in an interview with the BBC's Arabic TV service.

"The Taliban has got much better. They are much more violent, they are much more organised and so there's going to be fighting that is associated with it," he said at Bagram air base outside Kabul.

Although he expressed confidence that there were sufficient resources in Helmand to hold areas taken by troops from the militants, the head of the British Army, General Richard Dannatt, has called for more troops on the ground.

"There may well be a case for what I would call a short term uplift... for about 12 to 18 months until the Afghan National Army can get the right strength down here," he said Friday.

The operations in the south are the first major test of US President Barack Obama's sweeping new stratgey to stabilise Afghanistan, which includes the deployment of an extra 21,000 troops.

About 4,000 US Marines, backed by hundreds of Afghan forces, were dropped behind Taliban lines on July 2. About 3,000 British troops have been pressing Operation Panther's Claw slightly further north since June 23.

Makeshift bombs, known in military parlance as improvised explosive devices (IEDs), have also become increasingly sophisticated, and the cause of death of about 80 percent of soldiers killed in the Afghan insurgency, officials say.

"On flat land as in Helmand, the Taliban can't fight troops face to face. IEDs are the best weapon for a guerrilla on such terrain. They can strike troops by IED and block their movement," said Afghan analyst Waheed Mujda.

"Once their routes are blocked, they have to pass through less flat terrain. There they (the Taliban) can attack them directly," he said.

Although US commanders claim their military is the best counter-insurgency force in the world after six years in Iraq, conventional fighting machines have for years been laid low by guerrillas. Heat can also slow down foreigners.

"In a guerrilla war, a soldier must have the capability to manoeuvre. In Helmand, most NATO or US soldiers lack that capability, due to the harsh climate and weight of their gear," Mujda added.

Scorching summer temperatures can reach up to 46 degrees Celsius (115 degrees Fahrenheit) in Helmand.

Britain has lost 16 soldiers this month. Eight were killed in one 24-hour period, and a lieutenant colonel became the most senior British Army officer killed in action since the 1982 Falklands War.

"The terrain is more difficult for the British than the Americans. Where they are in the north, there are a lot of canals, few roads and a lot of IEDs, which limit their movement," said one Western military official.

"It seems that the insurgents have decided to stay and defend northern Helmand, while they have fled or stopped fighting in the south," said one US officer on condition of anonymity.

"We are going to continue to see big losses in the next one or two months," he added. "But once this operation is done, we will have managed to stabilise these areas for the better."

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