KABUL (AFP) - More than 10 percent of planned voting stations could be closed in Afghanistan during landmark elections because of safety fears, officials said Thursday, as escalating violence killed 14 civilians. As the August 20 polling day looms, fears of violence and suicide attacks are growing after the Taliban threatened to stop the electorate of 17 million from voting in the countrys second presidential election. Election officials said security fears could mean hundreds of polling stations across the country do not open, cutting the planned number of voting destinations by up to 12 percent. The Independent Election Commission (IEC) said the total number of stations could be as low as 6,200, down from earlier expectations of close to 7,000. IEC officials were unable to say exactly how many voting stations will open for the presidential and provincial council elections. The number will be somewhere between the two figures, 6,200 and 7,000. It will be clear on election day, we will not know until then, the IECs deputy electoral officer Zekria Barakzai told AFP. The IEC submitted a list of 6,969 potential polling centres to security authorities in April, it said, noting the number was substantially higher than the 6,200 centres used in provincial and parliamentary elections in 2005. The number next week, it said in a statement, would either be the same or more than in 2005. Officials would assess the security situation of specific areas on the day, with chief electoral officer Daud Ali Najafi telling reporters: There could be far fewer centres because they cannot be secured. As the IEC expressed its concerns, officials said bomb blasts in southern Afghanistan killed 14 civilians, including 11 members of one family, when a roadside bomb struck a minivan in Helmand province. The dead were five sons, four daughters and both parents, police commander for the southern zone, General Ghulam Wahdat, said, blaming the blast on the Taliban. Only one little girl around six years old survived, added the provincial government spokesman Daud Ahmadi. A roadside bomb in neighbouring Kandahar province killed three children as they were playing on Wednesday, police said. All the three children are boys between six and 11 years of age, said provincial police chief Mohammad Shah Khan. Civilians bear the brunt of Afghanistans Taliban-led insurgency, which has reached record proportions eight years after the 2001 US-led invasion overthrew their regime and installed a Western-backed administration. In an increasingly violent north, Afghan security forces fought off Taliban insurgents in a battle an official said left eight militants and two policemen dead. The surge in violence came as presidential hopefuls squeezed in more rallies ahead of the final day of campaigning on Tuesday, and election officials rushed through last-minute preparations. Afghan security forces were also attacked overnight, with a clash in the northern province of Kunduz. In the fighting today, eight Taliban have been killed and 11 are wounded, provincial police chief Mohammad Raziq said, adding two policemen have been martyred. Three others were injured, he said. The clash was in Archi district, where insurgents killed the police chief two days ago. The US military said one of its soldiers was killed in a roadside bomb in the south on Wednesday. Nearly 30 international soldiers have lost their lives in Afghanistan so far this month, almost all of them as a result of improvised explosive devices, or IEDs a favourite weapon of the militants. US and British forces have been pressing a major offensive in the southern province of Helmand ahead of the presidential and provincial council elections. About 4,000 of them deployed into insurgent strongholds in early July and were able to retake areas held by the extremists; another 400 pushed into a district in northeastern Helmand on Wednesday. There are more than 100,000 foreign soldiers in Afghanistan, around two-thirds of them in the US military, with British and Canadian forces also playing a role in the south, the most dangerous battlefield.