Sept. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Italy and Spain will join the U.S. in sending additional troops to boost international forces in Afghanistan and increase security during the Oct. 9 presidential election, a U.S. military spokesman said.

The U.S. is sending an infantry company and 1,000 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division, Major Scott Nelson, said yesterday in the Afghan capital, Kabul, according to the American Forces Press Service.

Italy and Spain are each providing an additional battalion of soldiers, Nelson said, without giving the number of service personnel involved, the Press Service said on the U.S. Defense Department's Web site.

Afghanistan is preparing to hold its first democratic elections when President Hamid Karzai and 17 candidates stand in a presidential poll. Attacks by suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters on Afghan forces and international aid workers, as well as a slow voter registration process, forced the poll to be delayed twice since June. General elections are scheduled to be held in April.

Nematullah Shahrani, one of four Afghan vice presidents, escaped unhurt yesterday when a bomb exploded alongside his convoy in the northern province of Kunduz, Agence France-Presse reported. Karzai was targeted in a rocket attack on his helicopter last week, AFP reported at the time.

Taliban Attacks

Fighters from the ousted Taliban militia carried out the attack on Karzai and will target the 18 presidential candidates, AFP cited Abdul Latif Hakimi, a spokesman for the Taliban, as saying by telephone from an unknown location last week.

Two U.S. soldiers were killed in a firefight yesterday in southeastern Afghanistan, AFP said, citing the U.S. military.

Hakimi claimed responsibility for an attack Saturday on employees of the international charity Afghan Aid, the news agency reported today.

Nine employees of the organization were assaulted and their compound in Kamu village in the eastern province of Nuristan was ransacked, AFP cited Afghan Aid spokesman Dave Mather as saying.

Hakimi said 15 people were attacked, according to AFP.

``We attacked 15 workers and beat them and later released them because they were Afghans,'' AFP cited Hakimi as saying.

Afghan Aid staff in Nuristan didn't have any evidence the attackers were Taliban members, Mather said, according to AFP.

Election Security

Security for the presidential election is being boosted with 25,000 North Atlantic Treaty Organization and U.S. soldiers and 20,000 U.S.- and German-trained Afghan police deployed, Jean Arnault, the UN special representative to Afghanistan, told the Security Council last month.

The Afghan army at the weekend established a regional command headquarters in the Kandahar region in southeastern Afghanistan, the American Forces Press Service said.

The army plans to set up additional commands in Gardez in eastern Afghanistan, Herat in the west and Mazar-e-Sharif in the north, it said.

The regional command will involve 3,000 Afghan soldiers and will ``provide the security foundation'' for the Kandahar region, said U.S. Air Force Major General Craig Weston, chief of the office of military cooperation in Afghanistan, according to the Press Service.

The Kandahar region was the main power base for the Taliban militia, which took power in Afghanistan in 1996. The militia was ousted in the U.S.-led war against terrorism in 2001.

To contact the reporter on this story: Paul Tighe in Sydney at ptighe@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: September 21, 2004 03:31 EDT