Kabul, Afghanistan ? Afghan soldiers botched a brazen attempt to assassinate the defense minister at the capital’s airport Saturday, while fighting in southern Afghanistan left 30 suspected militants dead, officials said.

The violence came as U.S. military commanders warned in an interview with The Associated Press that Taliban insurgents might try to disrupt the Sept. 18 legislative elections with “spectacular” assaults using car bombs and suicide attackers.

Meanwhile, a helicopter carrying Afghanistan’s army chief and three Cabinet ministers crashed and burst into flames while taking off, but all on board escaped with only minor injuries. The government called it an accident.

Nine Afghan soldiers were arrested in the attempt to shoot Defense Minister Rahim Wardak at the airport, spokesman Gen. Mohammed Saher Azimi said.

Four bullets hit his convoy as the vehicles left the airport, but Wardak had gotten out, he said. One bullet hit “the exact place where the defense minister had been sitting in the car,” and a ministry staffer was wounded, Azimi said.

Afghan people run away as an Afghan military helicopter crashes in the Panjshir Valley Saturday after a memorial ceremony.

“It is clear it was an assassination attempt,” he said.

The helicopter carrying army chief Bismillah Khan and three Cabinet ministers crashed during takeoff in the Panjshir Valley. Presidential spokesman Khaleeq Ahmed blamed the crash on the chopper’s rotor blades clipping a tree during takeoff.

The craft was about 30 yards in the air when it wobbled, then descended and crashed, said an AP photographer at the scene. It burst into flames and then exploded.

Azimi said Khan, Sediqa Balkhi and the pilots, suffered minor injuries.

The officials had attended a memorial service in honor of Ahmed Shah Masood, the former head of the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance who was killed by two assassins Sept. 9, 2001.