Four suspected Taleban militants have attacked a medical clinic killing a doctor and a bystander in central Afghanistan, Afghan officials say. Police reached the area and arrested two of the militants who were injured in the clash, according to Ghazni province governor Haji Sher Allam. A man claiming to speak for the Taleban said they carried out Monday's attack in Andar district. There has been a rise in violence ahead of September's parliamentary elections. "We killed the doctor, Mohammed Hashim, because he was a former communist and he was also spying for the Americans," said Abdul Latif Hakimi, who says he is a Taleban spokesman. Mr Hakimi also told the AFP news agency that the doctor was a candidate in the parliamentary elections. The UN-supported Joint Electoral Management Body and the interior ministry both deny this. Afghanistan suffers from a severe brain drain and a lack of specialists after decades of unrest. The country is said to have only one doctor per 50,000 inhabitants.
Meanwhile, the US military said in a statement on Tuesday that they had discovered three separate weapons caches in eastern Afghanistan. One cache, discovered near Nangarhar province, included an anti-aircraft gun and hundreds of anti-aircraft rounds. The ammunition was destroyed by explosives experts, the statement said.