Incident

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Incident

Top Kandahar official killed during prayers

21 April 2010 04:43 (UTC +04:00)

Kandahar was the power center of the Taliban before the U.S.-led invasion in 2001, and attempts to secure the surrounding province from Taliban guerrillas and institute new governance programs this summer could be crucial to the fate of the 8 1/2-year war. With only weeks to go before the offensive, the Taliban has carried out a series of assassinations and attacks targeting political officials, religious leaders and western contractors.

Even so, residents were stunned by what happened Monday night: Deputy Mayor Azizullah Yarmal walked into a mosque in central Kandahar, turned toward Mecca and began to pray. As he reached the point where he and the others in the mosque knelt in unison and then bent forward to touch their foreheads to the ground, a gunman shot him with a pistol, said Zalmy Ayoubi, a government spokesman.

The gunman and accomplices escaped, and the Taliban quickly claimed responsibility.

"We have killed him because he was working for this puppet government," Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, one of the Taliban’s regular spokesmen, said in a telephone interview. "We will target all those who are working for government."

The top NATO civilian official in Afghanistan, former British Ambassador Mark Sedwill, called the shooting "an appalling act."

"This was a man who was simply seeking to serve his people," he said.

Shaken residents said he was probably killed because he was seen as honest and effective -- unlike so many other Kandahar leaders.

"He was one of the officials who was dedicated to his job, and he was actually committed to his work," said Ayoubi, who described him as an honest problem-solver. "We really lost a good person."