The Taliban governor of Afghanistan’s Balkh province killed in suicide assault.
Kabul:
The Taliban governor of Afghanistan’s Balkh province, identified for preventing in opposition to Islamic State jihadists, was killed in a suicide assault at his workplace on Thursday, officers mentioned.
The killing, a day after he met prime authorities officers visiting from Kabul, makes Mohammad Dawood Muzammil one of many highest-ranking figures slain because the Taliban stormed again to energy in 2021.
Violence throughout Afghanistan has dramatically dropped because the Taliban seized management, however the safety state of affairs has once more deteriorated with IS claiming a number of lethal assaults.
“Two folks, together with Mohammad Dawood Muzammil, the governor of Balkh, have been killed in an explosion this morning,” native police spokesman Asif Waziri instructed AFP, including that the blast occurred on the second ground of his workplace, within the provincial capital Mazar-i-Sharif.
“It was a suicide assault. We do not have data as to how the suicide bomber reached the workplace of the governor,” he mentioned, including that two folks had been additionally wounded.
Authorities deployed further safety on the governorate, who forbade journalists from taking pictures, an AFP correspondent reported from close to the location of the blast.
Muzammil was “martyred in an explosion by the enemies of Islam”, tweeted authorities spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid.
Muzammil was initially appointed governor of the jap province of Nangarhar, the place he led the struggle in opposition to IS jihadists, earlier than being moved to Balkh final 12 months.
On Wednesday, he met two deputy prime ministers and different senior officers visiting Balkh to evaluation a significant irrigation undertaking in northern Afghanistan, in keeping with a authorities assertion.
IS has emerged as the most important safety problem to the Taliban authorities since final 12 months, finishing up assaults in opposition to Afghan civilians in addition to foreigners and international pursuits.
A number of assaults have rocked Balkh, together with in Mazar-i-Sharif final 12 months, some claimed by IS.
In January, a suicide bomber killed not less than 10 folks when he blew himself up close to the international ministry in Kabul, in an assault claimed by IS.
The Taliban and IS share an austere Sunni Islamist ideology, however the latter are preventing to ascertain a world “caliphate” as a substitute of the Taliban’s extra inward-looking objective of ruling an impartial Afghanistan.
At the very least 5 Chinese language nationals had been wounded in December when gunmen stormed a lodge widespread with businesspeople in Kabul.
That raid was claimed by IS, as was an assault on Pakistan’s embassy in Kabul in December that Islamabad denounced as an “assassination try” in opposition to its ambassador.
Two Russian embassy workers members had been killed in a suicide bombing outdoors their mission in September in one other assault claimed by IS.
(Aside from the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV workers and is revealed from a syndicated feed.)
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