KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, (Reuters) – A suicide bomber killed the police chief of Afghanistan’s Kandahar province yesterday, the second assassination this year of a top official in an area that is the Taliban’s heartland and the focus of a U.S. military surge.
Khan Mohammad Mujahid, one of the most prominent government targets in one of Afghanistan’s most dangerous provinces, was killed in his office in tightly-protected police headquarters, said Zalmay Ayoubi, a spokesman for the provincial governor.
The attack comes months before the start of a critical transfer of security responsibilities from foreign to Afghan forces, and after NATO-led troops claimed progress in ousting insurgents from long-term strongholds around Kandahar city.
It was not immediately clear how the bomber smuggled his explosives through several layers of security meant to separate Mujahid and other senior policemen from would-be assassins.
Police headquarters is in the centre of Kandahar, near the city hall and close to where Deputy Governor Abdul Latif Ashna was killed in a January, by a suicide attack on his convoy. Both of the dead men were Pashtuns from the Alokozai tribe.
