Killings of election security staff will not delay Afghan vote: UN

The killings of two British security workers and their Afghan interpreter in north-eastern Afghanistan will not have any impact on the elections they were helping organise, the United Nations said Thursday.
UN spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva said efforts to register voters ahead of September polls would press on across Afghanistan despite the deaths this week of the three men in the remote mountainous province of Nuristan.
"Absolutely no changes have taken effect since yesterday as a result of this attack," Silva told reporters.
"All the plans that we had for voter registration are in effect, so registrations continue in all provinces where voter registration sites were opened since May 1st."
The bodies of the three men, working for British firm Global Risk to assist UN efforts to register the country's 10 million voters ahead of presidential and general elections, were discovered Wednesday, killed by unknown attackers.
Global Risk is in charge of evaluating security ahead of establishing offices to manage the registration, which started May 1 in 30 of the country's 34 provinces.
The UN spokesman said that although the registration process could be delayed in Nuristan, it was imperative operations were continued across the rest of the country.
"Electoral registration is indeed something that Afghans want. All of us ... must do all we can to make it possible for the Afghans to meet their aspiration of registering and voting in order to choose their elected leaders," Silva added.
Nuristan, which shares a border with Pakistan, is the stronghold of the hard-line Hezb-i-Islami movement of renegade warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, wanted as a terrorist by Washington.
The region is considered a high risk zone by foreign organisations in Afghanistan, who fear attacks from extremists linked to the former Taleban regime or the al Qaeda terror network.
An Afghan interior ministry delegation, accompanied by UN representatives and employees of another security firm, Total Risk, visited Nuristan by helicopter Thursday in an attempt to investigate the killings.
The bodies of the three victims had been brought to Kabul a day earlier. The two Britons were due to be sent home Thursday via Germany, according to Silva.