KANDAHAR – Gunmen have shot dead Lt-Col Malalai Kakar, the most prominent female police officer in a male-dominated country.

The attackers ambushed Ms Kakar outside her house as she was leaving for work in her car.

The head of the city’s department of crimes against women, Ms Kakar was shot in the head. Her son, who was with her, was severely injured and is now in a coma.

Ms Kakar joined Kandahar’s police force in 1982, taking after her father and brothers. When the extremist Taliban movement took over in 1996, she was barred from the force.

Ms Kakar has over the years become one of the country’s most high profile women for her work.

Arresting abusive husbands and freeing their families, she headed a team of women police officers and received numerous death threats from a re-emerging Taliban.

She is known best for taking out three would-be assassins in a gunfight.

Kandahar, the spiritual birthplace of the Taliban, is battleground between government troops and the Taliban rebls.

Ms Kakar leaves behind six children.