PAGHMAN, Afghanistan (AFP) — A remote-controlled bomb blew up the vehicle of a provincial governor Saturday killing him and three other men near Kabul, officials said, in an attack claimed by Taliban rebels.
Mohammad Jan Abdullah Wardak, governor of Logar province and a former cabinet minister, was assassinated near his home in the picturesque town of Paghman, about 20 kilometres (12 miles) west of the capital, officials said.
The long-time Taliban opponent was the second provincial governor to be murdered since the Islamists were removed from power in 2001 and started their insurgency.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, which also killed two bodyguards and a driver.
"It was a remote-controlled bomb," a Kabul police chief, General Alishah Paktiawal, told AFP near the mangled remains of the four-wheel-drive vehicle.
The bomb had been planted into a dry river bed that the governor had had to travel cross to reach a main road.
"This is the work of terrorism, the terrorists who want to kill Afghanistan's people," Paktiawal said.
"The governor has been martyred," interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary said, confirming the blast was caused by a bomb.
He blamed the attack on the "enemies of Afghanistan," a term Afghan officials use to refer to Taliban and other extremists or criminals behind a wave of insurgent violence.
Wardak is the first provincial governor to be killed since the September 2006 assassination of the governor of eastern Paktia province, Hakim Taniwal.
Taniwal died in a suicide bombing also claimed by the Taliban, who have killed dozens of district-level governors and government employees during their campaign.
Wardak, aged in his early 50s, was a former commander in one of several Soviet occupation resistance factions and the minister of martyrs and disabled in the 2002-2004 transitional government that followed the Taliban's removal.
He had been appointed governor of Logar, a troubled province adjoining Kabul, about a year ago and was on his way to work when he was killed, the Independent Directorate of Local Governance said.
He was due to be buried on Sunday.
Logar province has seen a rise in Taliban activity in recent months, including the August 14 killing of three Western women aid workers and their Afghan driver as they were driving to Kabul.
The Taliban were in government between 1996 and 2001, when they were driven out in a US-led invasion launched when they refused to hand over their Al-Qaeda allies after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
Said to be assisted by foreign fighters including Arabs and Central Asians, they most regularly target Afghan security forces and international troops.
A British soldier was killed on Friday when he was shot in the head during a firefight in southern Helmand province, the Ministry of Defence in London said.
The soldier was part of a routine patrol that came into contact with "enemy forces," it said Friday.
Britain has approximately 7,800 soldiers in Afghanistan as part of NATO's nearly 53,000-strong International Security Assistance Force.
More than 200 international soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan this year, and nearly 1,000 since 2001, most of them in insurgent attacks which military commanders say have grown increasingly sophisticated.
A general deterioration in security through extremist violence and crime has alarmed Afghanistan and its allies and hampered a costly international effort to lift the country from the ruins of three decades of war.
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