More die in run-up to voting

Eight civilians and 15 militants were also killed in separate clashes across the occupied country, according to Nato.

On Saturday local politician Abdul Manan, who was running for parliament in a nationwide election being held on September 18, was gunned down in Herat.

And Afghan officials found the bodies of five kidnapped campaign workers for a female parliamentary candidate in the same western province.

The workers for Fawzya Galani were kidnapped by armed men on Wednesday.

No-one has claimed responsibility for the killings.

Authorities blamed the Taliban, which has been accused over the deaths of two other parliamentary candidates since the election campaign was launched in early July.

While streets in Kabul are festooned with campaign posters, many citizens say they don't plan to vote, either because of safety concerns or cynicism over ineffective government and widespread corruption.

Electoral officials have cut the number of voting sites nationwide by nearly 1,000 to 5,897 because of security concerns.

Nato has stepped up efforts to provide security for the balloting, but frictions have continued to undermine relations between the fragile administration of President Hamid Karzai and its Western allies, largely over the endemic official corruption that it presides over.

On Saturday, the Karzai regime criticised US media reports that numerous Afghan officials had allegedly received payments from the CIA - including one who reportedly took a bribe to block a wide-ranging probe into graft.

A presidential office statement did not address or deny any specific allegations, but called the reports an insult to the government and an attempt to defame people within it.

The statement was issued on the same day that a top Afghan anti-corruption prosecutor said he had been forced into retirement.

Deputy Attorney General Fazel Ahmed Faqiryar had complained that the attorney general and others were blocking corruption cases against high-ranking government officials.

He said that Attorney General Mohammad Ishaq Aloko had written a retirement letter for him earlier in the week and that Mr Karzai had accepted it.