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28 March 2024

Suicide attack kills Afghan deputy governor

Published
By AFP

A suicide attacker on an explosives-laden motorcycle on Tuesday killed a deputy Afghan governor and up to five other people in a direct attack on his vehicle, officials said.

Mohammad Kazim Allahyar, deputy governor for the troubled southern province of Ghazni, was on his way to his office when the bomber struck.

"The deputy governor has been martyred. His son and his nephew have also been martyred. In total, six people have been martyred," provincial police chief Delawar Zahid told AFP, describing the bombing as a "suicide attack".

Eight other people, including passers-by, were injured in the blast from the three-wheeled motorbike on a dirt road outside the provincial capital Ghazni, the police chief said. The bomber targeted Allahyar's vehicle, he added.

The interior ministry confirmed the incident but said a total of five people had died -- the deputy governor, his son, two of his nephews and a guard.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Tuesday's bombing.

Similar attacks are often blamed on the Taliban, the Islamist militia leading an insurgency against the Western-backed government that has gained pace each year since the 2001 US-led invasion toppled the group from power.

The insurgency is at its most virulent in the south, which includes Ghazni and is the focus of a US-led strategy designed to reverse the militia's momentum to allow American forces to start drawing down from next year.

There are currently more than 152,000 NATO troops in the country, some of whom are leading a new joint push against insurgents in southern Kandahar city and surrounding areas, dubbed Operation Dragon Strike, officials said.

Dragon Strike is the latest phase of Operation Hamkari, seen as a last-ditch effort to eliminate the Taliban from Kandahar and the surrounding areas of Zhari, Panjawyi and Arghandab, long regarded as Taliban hotbeds.

"The aim of this operation is to disrupt Taliban, clean the insurgents out of villages, and expand law and order. Reconstruction projects will follow," Kandahar provincial police chief Fazil Ahmad Sherzad said on Monday.

Afghan military commanders have said the operation could take more than two months to complete, and involved two battalions of Afghan soldiers.

"We expect hard fighting," said German Brigadier General Josef Blotz, spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

"There have been a number of shaping operations to soften insurgent defences in preparation for the harder fighting," he said in a statement.

"Afghan and coalition forces are destroying Taliban fighting positions so they will not have anywhere left to hide."

Operation Hamkari, which means cooperation in Dari, was launched about five months ago as the United States was deploying an extra 30,000 troops, mostly to Kandahar province, in preparation for the final push against the Taliban.

The Taliban movement was launched in Kandahar province and has long considered the region its fiefdom.