US army launches Lightening Resolve to ensure security for Afghan elections
15/7/2004 9:08
The new
military operation has been launched after the Afghan Election Commission
rescheduled the Presidential election for Oct. 9 and parliamentary poll for
April 2005 mainly due to security concerns.
Taliban's fugitive leader Mullah
Mohammad Omar whose regime was overthrown under a US-led invasion in late 2001
has termed the elections as a "drama to legitimize the US occupation of
Afghanistan" and vowed to disrupt it.
The Lightening Resolve which is a
nationwide operation kicked off in the weekend but the spokesman declined to
give more details.
As the post-war Afghanistan is approaching the first-ever
western style elections, the Taliban hard-line movement and its allied militants
began intensifying their hit-and-run activities against US and government
interests in the country.
More than a dozen people including four election
workers have been killed and 40 others injured in militant-related insurgency
for the last three weeks.
Xinhua
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