AFP - A suicide bomber killed five people in Afghanistan on Tuesday as candidates pounded the campaign trail ahead of elections that threaten to be overshadowed by a mounting Taliban insurgency.
  
In the southern province of Zabul, a suicide attacker walked up to an intelligence agency vehicle in a busy bazaar and blew himself up, killing one of the agency's staff and four civilian passers-by, police said.
  
There was no immediate claim of responsibility but the attack was similar to scores carried out by the Taliban, who have routinely targeted security forces in their bloody insurgency which has reached record levels this year.
  
Sixteen civilians, including three children, a policeman and two agency staff were wounded, said deputy provincial police chief Ghulam Jailani Khan.
  
Zabul is one of Afghanistan's most troubled provinces, part of the southern belt where the insurgency is strongest and where thousands of Western soldiers are pressing major battles to root out the Islamist hardliners.
  
A provincial governor survived an assassination attempt just 10 kilometres (six miles) outside the Afghan capital Kabul and eight rockets slammed into the city, wounding a child and adult, authorities said.
  
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the volley of rockets at dawn, saying they were aimed at an Afghan military base and the international airport.
  
The interior ministry said eight slammed into the city, including one several hundred metres (feet) from the US embassy and others near the airport, in strikes that left a child wounded by shattered glass and also hurt a man.
  
There are periodic rocket attacks on Kabul but they rarely cause casualties or significant damage.
  
Just outside the capital early Tuesday, the governor of the neighbouring province of Wardak, Mohammad Haleem Fidyee, escaped with his life when four mines placed under a bridge exploded as his vehicle crossed, the ministry said.
  
Kabul's Western allies have deployed thousands of extra soldiers to secure Taliban strongholds in the south to safeguard against concerns that violence could thwart inclusive voting.
  
Afghan troops dropped from helicopters into a Taliban stronghold in southern Helmand province killed 15 "opponents" in an operation Tuesday, said regional army commander General Mohaidin Ghori.
  
President Hamid Karzai, seeking re-election on August 20, took his campaign tour to the eastern city of Gardez where he told about 4,000 people that he was pushing Taliban peace talks, adding: "We'll have some results very soon."
  
On July 21, six suicide bombers in wigs and burkas armed with rifles and suicide vests tried to storm government buildings in Gardez, killing four people in an attack claimed by the Taliban.
  
Taliban militants have increasingly used coordinated suicide and gun attacks in their fight against Karzai's Western-backed government and its foreign military allies deployed in the country since the 2001 US-led invasion.
  
"The first thing I'm going to do if I win the elections will be to bring peace to Afghanistan," Karzai said, highlighting development and building national unity as successes of his nearly eight years in power.
  
A recent spike in violence that has seeped increasingly out of traditional southern and eastern strongholds has fanned fears about security in the countdown to the August 20 presidential and provincial council elections.
  
The vote marks only the second time in history that Afghans will vote for a head of state and has been billed as a landmark on Western efforts to build democracy since the 2001 US-led invasion forced the Taliban out of government.
  
Karzai is the frontrunner out of 41 candidates for the presidency who have only 13 days left for campaigning.
  
There are more than 100,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan mainly deployed under NATO and a separate US-led coalition that is trying to support Karzai's government in defeating the Taliban-led insurgency.
  
Against a background of speculation that the top US commander in Afghanistan may be seeking more forces for the war, the Pentagon said Defence Secretary Robert Gates held a secret meeting on Sunday with General Stanley McChrystal.