MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan, (Reuters) – Afghan  President Hamid Karzai’s main rival drew a huge crowd to a rally  yesterday but violence still loomed as a threat, with a former  leader escaping an assassination attempt a week before the vote.

Tens of thousands of supporters greeted Abdullah Abdullah,  Karzai’s former foreign minister, in his stronghold in the  northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, the biggest rally so far before  the Aug. 20 poll.

“Don’t think that this is finished. Don’t listen to what  others might tell you, this election is very close,” Abdullah  told supporters at the blue-tiled Shrine of Hazrat Ali.
Karzai needs to win more than 50 percent of the vote to  avoid a run-off against the second-placed challenger. A  U.S.-funded poll by a little-known Washington firm published  earlier this week gave Karzai 45 percent to Abdullah’s 25.

The Taliban have vowed to disrupt the election and violence,  especially in Karzai’s ethnic Pashtun power base in the south,  also looms as another threat to the man who has ruled  Afghanistan since 2001 and won the country’s first direct  election in 2004.

Poor voter turnout over security fears, especially in the  south, could eat into Karzai’s support base and increase the  chances of a second round run-off vote in October, when other  challengers in the 36-strong field could unite behind Karzai.

Abdullah is half Pashtun, Afghanistan’s largest ethnic  group, but draws most of his support from ethnic Tajiks.
The crowd in Mazar-i-Sharif, about 300 kms (190 miles) north  of Kabul, swelled to about 50,000 supporters wearing blue caps  and T-shirts bearing Abdullah’s lightly bearded image as his  convoy drove to the shrine. Some were trampled in the crush.

Violence this year had reached its worst levels since the  Taliban were ousted by U.S.-backed Afghan forces in 2001 and  escalated further after U.S. and British forces launched major operations in southern Helmand province.

Three British soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb in  Helmand yesterday, the Ministry of Defence in London said. A  total of 199 British soldiers have been killed in the  Afghanistan war, at least 30 since the Helmand offensives began.

A U.S. service member was also killed by “direct fire” in  the south yesterday, the U.S. military said. No details were  available.
The operations in Helmand were the first under U.S.  President Barack Obama’s new regional strategy to defeat the  Taliban and stabilise Afghanistan. But the Taliban have hit  back, their reach spreading out of their heartland in the south  and east into the previously more peaceful north and west, and  even to the outskirts of Kabul.
Former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, one of  Abdullah’s main supporters, survived a Taliban ambush yesterday in northern Kunduz province, where militants clashed  with police for a second night. Rabbani was not hurt.

Mohammad Qasim Fahim, one of Karzai’s running mates, also  survived an assassination attempt in Kunduz last month.
Fahim was the military leader of the U.S.-backed guerrillas  known as the Northern Alliance that helped topple the Taliban,  with Rabbani the movement’s political chief.
Rabbani was travelling on a Kunduz road when the Taliban  ambushed him with rocket-propelled grenades and gunfire, said  Ali Abad district chief Habibullah Mohtashim.
Rabbani and others in the convoy were unhurt. Three Taliban  fighters were killed in the ensuing clash with Rabbani’s  bodyguards, Mohtashim said. The Taliban claimed responsibility.