Gunmen kill Karzai adviser
Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan
Gunmen strapped with explosives killed a close adviser to Afghan President Hamid Karzai and a member of parliament on Sunday in another insurgent strike against the Afghan leader’s inner circle.
Jan Mohammed Khan was an adviser to Karzai on tribal issues and was close to the president, a fellow Pashtun.
His killing, for which the Taliban claimed responsibility, came less than a week after the assassination of Ahmed Wali Karzai, the president’s half brother and one of the most powerful men in southern Afghanistan.
Two men wearing suicide bomb vests and armed with guns attacked Khan’s home in the western Kabul district of Karti Char, said Defense Ministry official Gen. Zahir Wardak. Khan, who was governor of the Pashtun-dominated Uruzgan province in the south from 2002 until March 2006, was shot along with Uruzgan lawmaker Mohammed Ashim Watanwal, the official said.
Police killed one of the attackers before he could detonate his explosives, while the other was still barricaded inside the home, said the head of the Kabul police investigation unit, Mohammed Zahir.
A member of the police’s anti-terrorism unit was also killed, he added. The surviving gunman was alone in the house, Zahir said.
The assassination came as international military forces handed over security for Bamiyan province to Afghan security forces, part of a transition process in which seven areas are to be handed over to Karzai’s government this month.
It also came one day before Gen. David Petraeus, the top NATO commander in Afghanistan, hands over responsibility for the military campaign in Afghanistan to his replacement, Lt. Gen. John Allen.
In other violence Sunday, Afghan and NATO troops fought an overnight gunbattle with Taliban insurgents and called in an airstrike on the building where the fighters were holed up. At least 13 Taliban were killed.
Also Sunday, NATO said three of its service members died.
One was killed by a roadside bomb in eastern Afghanistan and two were killed by a similar device in the south. It did not release their nationalities.