An Afghan provincial governor, who was also a former cabinet minister, was among four people killed in an apparent Taliban suicide bomb attack near Kabul on Saturday, police said.
Logar province governor Abdullah Wardak, who fought alongside US troops during the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, died on a dirt road outside his home in Paghman, 20 km west of the capital.
Police gave varying accounts of the attack. Senior Kabul police officer Ali Shah Paktiawal said Wardak was killed when a remote-controlled device was detonated next to his car.
However, Logar police chief Ghulam Mustafa Mohseni said Wardak had been killed in a suicide attack.
‘The governor was leaving his house for the office,’ Mohseni told Reuters by telephone from Logar.
‘The suicide bomber was waiting near his residence. As the governor came out with his driver, he was targeted and killed.’ Mohseni had no further details.
Paktiawal told Reuters that Wardak’s driver and two of his body guards were also killed in the blast, which he said was the work of ‘Afghanistan’s enemies,’ a term often used by officials to describe the Taliban and other militants.
Wardak served as a commander for one of the armed factions that helped US-led troops overthrow the hardline Islamist Taliban government in late 2001.
He was later a minister in President Hamid Karzai’s government before he became governor for Logar, where the Taliban and other militants are active.
He is the second provincial governor to be assassinated by suicide bombers in recent years. Attacks against politicians, police and civil servants are fairly common in Afghanistan.
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