KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, April 28, (AFP): An Afghan tribal chief was shot dead in southern province Kandahar on Wednesday, the latest in a wave of assassinations blamed on Taleban insurgents, an official said.
The death of Haji Abdul Rahman, a tribal chieftain in Arghandab district, brings to 13 the number of community leaders and government officials have been killed in less than two months in the restive province, official figures show.
Rahman was walking home when unknown assailants shot him dead and fled, said Abdul Jabar, district governor Arghandab.
Jabar blamed the killing on the Taleban, which has added the street killing of government officials and pro-government elders to tactics including suicide attacks and remotely detonated bombs in its nearly nine-year insurgency.
“Haji Abdul Rahman was a tribal elder. He was killed by the enemies of Afghanistan,” Jabar told AFP. In other violence linked to the Taleban, three Afghan civilians were killed Wednesday when their vehicle drove over a roadside bomb in the neighbouring province of Zabul, a local official said.
In the northern province of Baghlan, where Taleban violence has picked up in recent years, eight Taleban guerrillas and two Afghan army soldiers were killed in clashes overnight, Afghan army General Murad Ali Murad said.
The fighting erupted as troops swept into Taleban-troubled villages in the Baghlan-i-Markazi district as part of a military operation launched about two weeks ago, he said.
The Taleban held power from 1996-2001, before being toppled in a US-led invasion. The militia then regrouped to wage an insurgency against the US-backed government in Kabul.
A Taleban-style bomb killed 12 civilians Wednesday when their van struck the device in eastern Afghanistan, an official said.
The victims were heading home from a shopping trip when they hit the bomb — known as an IED or improvised explosive device.
“There was an explosion on a civilian mini van today. Twelve people including women and children and men, were killed in that explosion,” Dawlat Khan Qayomi, district chief of Tani, in Khost province, told AFP.
Meanwhile, five Emiratis and an Afghan national have received jail terms in the United Arab Emirates for funding the Taleban, local newspapers reported on Wednesday.
The six men “were sentenced to three years in jail for funding the Taleban,” Gulf News reported. Two men were acquitted of similar charges.
The Afghan was given money by the other five “to channel it to Afghanistan,” the newspaper said.
The Taleban, which was forced from power in 2001, is engaged in an insurgency against Afghanistan’s Western-backed government and international military forces there. The group also operates in Pakistan.
Two Emiratis, Rashid Dawood and Abdullah Hassan, were given an additional year for “attempting to set up an organisation to enforce a strict code of Islam” which “the court said attacked civil liberties,” Gulf News said.
Khaleej Times said two Emiratis, whom it did not name, assaulted “three Emiratis and a Bangladeshi, leaving them disabled for about 20 days,” in connection with punishing “people for what they claimed were offences.”
Al-Ittihad newspaper said the trial before the Supreme Court began in early September.
The newspaper said at the time that the prosecution accused two defendants of financing terrorism and six others of promoting and supporting terrorism.
The prosecution submitted evidence from computers and documents seized when the defendants were arrested in October 2008, among a group of 21 people, the newspaper said.
Charges against 13 people, including 12 Emiratis and an Egyptian, who was deported, were dropped, it said.
Such trials are rare in the relatively stable UAE, a federation of seven emirates where foreigners make up more than 80 percent of the population.