AFGHANISTAN: Afghan President Hamid Karzai was forced to abort a trip to the provinces yesterday after a rocket exploded as his helicopter was trying to land.
The missile landed near a village school in the south-eastern province of Gardez, where Mr Karzai was due to make his first provincial visit since campaigning began for the October 9th presidential election.
The incident will be a setback to Mr Karzai's hopes of campaigning in the country's turbulent provinces, which he rarely visits since he narrowly escaped assassination in Kandahar city, the former Taliban stronghold, in September 2002.
Mr Karzai's supporters and a close aide have voiced concern that his efforts to rally the provincial vote in the October election will be hindered by security worries that keep him confined largely to his heavily-guarded palace in Kabul.
In an interview last month, Mr Karzai joked that his lack of interest in campaigning had frustrated his political allies and argued that he was too busy running the country.
Mr Jawed Ludin, Mr Karzai's spokesman, told the Associated Press that the president was "disappointed and a little upset that the security sometimes in these situations over-reacts" following the decision to abandon the Gardez trip and turn back to Kabul, where he landed safely. "He wanted to land and speak to the people," he said.
Mr Ludin said it was too early to say whether yesterday's incident was an assassination attempt on the president while a spokesman for the US-led military coalition in Afghanistan said it was not clear who had fired the rocket or whether it was intended to hit Mr Karzai. Many rockets have only a vague range and so would stand little chance of hitting a moving target.
Mr Karzai was due to open a school in Gardez, a market town that lies south of Kabul in the ethnic-Pashtun heartland. While the trip was not an official campaign stop, the government has been keen to win the hearts of the people in the rugged valleys and mountains that stretch from Gardez, the capital of Paktia province, to the border with Pakistan, where the Taliban, a principally Pashtun movement, still has some support.
A bomb that was blamed on hardline Islamic militants killed nine children and one adult at a school in the Zormat valley south of Gardez last month.