Bomb explodes inside sofa as election deaths mount

A former Communist general-turned-politician has been killed by a Taliban bomb hidden in his sofa. Abdul Jabar Qahraman was campaigning for tomorrow’s parliamentary election in Afghanistan and became the tenth candidate to die ahead of the polls when the blast tore through his campaign office. The Taliban took responsibility for the attack, which also killed three of Qahraman’s companions in the capital of Helmand province. The dead candidate had been a key figure in the last days of Afghanistan’s Soviet-backed government, holding military power in the south of the country until he went into exile in 1993. A Taliban statement said they had killed ‘‘a renowned communist.’’ Tomorrow’s poll will see nearly nine million registered voters choose MPs for 250 seats in Parliament.