Women killed in Afghan bus attack

The UN has called for more foreign troops to provide security

Two women have been killed in a bomb attack on a minibus carrying female election workers in Afghanistan.

About 12 others were injured and at least three, including a child, are said to be in a critical condition.

The incident happened just outside the city of Jalalabad on the main road leading to the Pakistani border.

Reports say the device had been placed in or under the team's minibus. The driver, who survived the blast, has been arrested.

A purported spokesman for the hardline former ruling group, the Taleban, told news agencies that it had committed the killings in order to stop people becoming involved in the electoral process.

The women had been on the way to help Afghan women register as voters at a site on the outskirts of Jalalabad when the explosion occurred.

They worked for the Electoral Commission, which is run jointly by the Afghan government and the United Nations.

Election fears

UN special representative Jean Arnault said he was profoundly outraged by the attack and sent his deepest condolences to the families of those who died.

He said such attacks would not succeed in stopping voter registration in the east, which he said was proceeding at a pace second only to the capital.

The attack came a day after Afghan President Hamid Karzai appealed to Nato to honour its pledge to send more troops to protect the presidential and parliamentary polls.

The latest figures say more than 4.5 million Afghans have registered to vote - over one-third of them women.

But widespread doubts have been raised about the possibility of holding free elections so soon, given the continuing violence in many parts of the country.

Taleban militants active in the east of the country have already attacked convoys of electoral staff but this is the first time any have been killed.

The BBC's Charles Haviland, in Kabul, says one of the women who survived the minibus blast said she and her colleagues would continue with their work to register female voters.