Suicide Bomb Kills Afghan Vice-Governor, Five Others

Allahyar, his son and two bodyguards were killed instantly when the attacker detonated his explosives at the back of their car near the airport in Ghazni city, provincial police chief Delawar Zahid told Reuters.

“Allahyar was on his way to work when a suicide bomber on a motorbike targeted his car … (they) were martyred,” Zahid said.

His nephew and a third bodyguard were wounded and died in hospital, Zahid said.

Suicide bomb attacks frequently kill civilians, bodyguards and members of the security forces, and insurgents sometimes execute low-level government officials, but it is relatively rare for them to hit high-level targets.

The most recent comparable attack was in eastern Laghman province in September last year when a suicide bomber killed Afghanistan’s deputy head of intelligence and at least 22 others, according to the head of the counter-terrorism department in Kabul, Abdul Ghafar Sayedzada.

Ghazni is southwest of Kabul and has seen a steady increase in Taliban activity over recent years.

This year has been the bloodiest in Afghanistan since the Taliban’s removal in 2001, with the militants making a comeback despite the presence of almost 150,000 foreign troops.

Rising violence and casualties are of deep concern in Washington, where U.S. President Barack Obama is due to conduct a strategy review of the increasingly unpopular war in December. Afghanistan is under renewed scrutiny after this month’s parliamentary election was hit by violence and widespread complaints of fraud, the second flawed poll in 13 months. Reuters