Suicide attacks kill 12 before Afghan vote

Taliban attacks rocked Afghanistan today two days before elections as suicide bombers killed more than 12 people, including UN staff and NATO troops, and a rocket slammed into the presidential compound.

The violence, striking at the heart of the capital Kabul, followed renewed Taliban threats to sabotage Thursday's ballot when 17 million Afghans will elect a president and heightened fears voters could stay away.

A suicide car bomb ripped through a busy road in Kabul used frequently by NATO and US troops, near a US military base and a bustling market, killing seven Afghan civilians and wounding around another 50, officials said.

"Reports indicate both Afghan civilians and ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) service members were killed and wounded in the blast as the vehicle exploded near an ISAF convoy," said the NATO-led force in a statement.

The United Nations in Kabul announced that two of its local Afghan staff were among the dead and that a third was wounded in the second deadly suicide attack targeting NATO in the capital in two days.

Most of the victims were civilians. Children were among the wounded and casualties were blackened by burn injuries and bloodied from shrapnel, witnesses said.

"It was a suicide attack... targeting a supply convoy of foreign forces," said Kabul criminal investigation police chief Sayed Abdul Ghafar Sayedzada.

Militants earlier fired volleys of rockets into the capital and the eastern city of Jalalabad, wounding at least 10 people, mostly women and children.