Taliban attack kills top Afghan officials

US commander unharmed

Associated Press

KABUL, Afghanistan

A high-level meeting to lay out security plans for Afghanistan’s upcoming parliamentary elections had just concluded when an elite Afghan guard turned his gun on the departing delegation in an attack Thursday that killed the powerful Kandahar police chief but missed the top U.S. commander in the country, Gen. Scott Miller.

The audacious assassination strike, which killed at least one other senior Afghan official and was claimed by the Taliban, underscored the harrowing lack of security in Afghanistan just two days before national elections and more than 17 years after the militant group was driven from power. A Taliban spokesman said Miller was the intended target.

However, Army Col. David Butler, who attended the Kandahar meeting with Miller, said the region’s powerful police chief, Abdul Raziq, who was killed in the volley of gunfire, was clearly the target, not the U.S. general.