Two officials assassinated in Afghanistan

Gunmen shoot dead women's affairs official in Laghman, while Nimroz province police chief dies in roadside bombing.

Last Modified: 10 Dec 2012 07:36

Suspected Taliban fighters have assassinated an Afghan women's affairs official in Laghman province, just months after her predecessor was blown up by a bomb, while a police chief was killed in a roadside bombing in Herat province.

Nadia Sidiqi, the acting director of the women's affairs department in the eastern province of Laghman, was shot dead by two unidentified men while commuting in a motorised rickshaw on Monday.

"We have launched an investigation and we have sealed off the area where the attack took place and we will very soon capture the attackers," Laghman police chief Ahmad Sherzad told AFP news agency.

In a separate attack, General Mohammad Musa Rasoli, the provincial police chief of Nimroz, was killed when his vehicle was struck by a bomb in Adraskan district of Herat province, while he was heading to Nimroz on his way to work, officials told Al Jazeera.

Rasoli was seriously wounded in the blast and rushed to the hospital, where he died of his wounds.

Surge of targeted assassinations

Sidiqi took over from provincial women's affairs director Hanifa Safi, who was killed when a magnetic bomb attached to her vehicle exploded in July.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Monday's attack, but targeted assassinations are increasingly used by Taliban fighters in their campaign against the Western-backed Kabul government.

The armed group was notorious for their suppression of women's rights during their rule from 1996 to 2001, when they were overthrown by a US-led invasion.

Earlier this month a young woman still at school who also doubled as a health worker was shot dead as she walked out of her family home in Kapisa province, which borders Laghman.

On Thursday a Taliban suicide bomber with explosives in his underpants wounded the nation's intelligence chief after entering a tightly-guarded guesthouse by posing as a Taliban peace envoy.

The Afghan government is scrambling to improve security before NATO troops withdraw by the end of 2014. Some Afghans fear another civil war may erupt after the pullout

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