Gunmen kill director of women's affairs in southern Afghanistan

Two gunmen on a motorbike killed the provincial director of Afghanistan’s Ministry of Women’s Affairs outside her home in the southern city of Kandahar today.

Safia Ahmed-jan was murdered outside the front gate of her home as she was walking to her office, said Tawfiq ul-Ulhakim Parant, senior adviser to the women’s ministry in Kabul.

She was wearing a burqa when she was shot, Parant said.

Aleem Sidique, spokesman for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, said the UN was “appalled at this senseless murder”.

“What we need to see in Afghanistan is peace, development and progress,” Sidique said. “We share the sentiment of the majority of Afghan people who are appalled at this killing.”

Ahmed-jan was known for being an active proponent of women’s rights and for staying in Kandahar through the country’s worst years of war.

In other violence, two people were killed in eastern Afghanistan today when their car exploded five miles west of the eastern city of Khost, said Gen. Mohammed Ayub, the provincial police chief.

The two were planning to conduct a bombing in the town, but their explosive device went off prematurely on an open road, Ayub said. There were no other casualties.

Some 20 militants attacked the house of a district chief in neighbouring Paktika province late Sunday, killing him, said Sayed Jamal, spokesman for the provincial governor.

Authorities launched a search for the perpetrators today, recovering the district chief’s vehicle and detaining nine people for questioning, Jamal said.

Suspected Taliban militants, meanwhile, attacked and destroyed a medical clinic in Yaqoubi district of the eastern Khost province yesterday, Ayub said.