Eurasia Press & News
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) – Unidentified gunmen shot dead a government official in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday and U.S.-led forces killed five militants south of the capital, a senior police official and the U.S. military said.
Violence has surged in the war-torn country with some 3,800 people — a third of them civilians — killed in the first seven months of this year, the United Nations says.
Dost Mohammad Arghestani, head of the social affairs department in Kandahar province, was killed on his way to work on Tuesday morning by two gunmen on a motorbike, Kandahar police chief Matiullah Qateh told Reuters.
Kandahar is one of the main strongholds for Taliban Islamist insurgents, but drug smugglers, criminals and some tribal rivalries have also contributed to violence.
Further south, a roadside bomb killed nine civilians including women and children, in a mini-bus in Uruzgan province, the local police chief said.
Separately, U.S.-led soldiers killed five militants in an operation targeting a network for foreign fighters in Rashidan, southwest of Kabul, on Monday, the U.S. military said.
“The operation in Rashidan District targeted a Taliban sub-commander who was believed to have coordinated direct attacks against Afghan and coalition forces,” it said.
In another incident, a Nepali working as a cook for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was kidnapped along with six Afghan colleagues in western Herat.
Four were later released, but Taliban commander Ghulam Yahya Siwoshani told Reuters the militant group were holding the rest and they were in good health. Siwoshani did not say why they were keeping the men and did not make any demands.
Kidnapping has become a lucrative business in Afghanistan, where dozens of locals and foreigners have been abducted by criminals or Taliban-linked militants.
Ousted from power in 2001, Taliban insurgents have been behind a number of kidnappings in Afghanistan. Some have been killed, but most of the victims have been released unharmed.
