Gunmen Kill Candidate for New Parliament

Assailants shot to death a parliamentary candidate amid a spate of violence that has raised security fears ahead of Afghanistan's Sept. 18 election.

Haji Atiqullah, who was running for a seat in the new lower house of parliament, was killed in the southern province of Oruzgan. Gov. Jan Mohammed Khan blamed the Taliban.

In other violence, assailants fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a German peacekeeping base in Faizabad. The munition failed to explode.