Kandahar’s mayor killed in suicide attack

 

 

KABUL — The mayor of Kandahar was killed in a suicide attack Wednesday in the southern Afghan city, officials said, the latest victim in a wave of assassinations of high-profile Afghan government officials.

Ghulam Haider Hamidi, an ally of President Hamid Karzai’s family, was killed at the municipal hall in Kandahar city when a suicide bomber set off explosives he had concealed in his turban, said Zalmai Ayoubi, a spokesman for Kandahar’s provincial governor.

The radical Islamist Taliban movement claimed responsibility for Hamidi’s killing.

“A coward killed our mayor today in a suicide attack,” Ayoubi said.

“The enemies of the people and peace martyred a servant of Afghanistan who was striving day and night for the rebuilding and flourishing of the country,” a presidential palace statement quoted Karzai as saying.

Hamidi, 65, had earned a good reputation for his campaign against corruption, embezzlement and the seizure of government plots by powerful men and some tribes in Kandahar province, where tribal rivalry is rampant and Taliban-led insurgents maintain a stronghold.

On Wednesday morning, demonstrators were protesting outside the mayor’s office after two children were accidentally killed Tuesday when municipality bulldozers razed houses built illegally in the Loye Weyala area of the city.

The mayor was leaving his office to meet with Loye Weyala elders about the incident when the bomber struck, a police official said. One other person was hurt in the incident, he said.

The bomber “was one of our mujaheddin and took advantage of today’s meeting to kill the mayor,” Taliban spokesman Qari Mohammad Yousuf said in a telephone interview. “The mayor was under our surveillance, and today was a good opportunity.”

U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, who is in his first week on the job, said he “condemned in the strongest possible terms the assassination of another senior Afghan government official.”

Crocker said that if the Taliban was responsible for the killing, it could indicate a shift in tactics because of an overall weakness.

“I would judge that the Taliban is now damaged to the point where they can no longer conduct large-scale operations. They’ve had to kind of regroup and figure out what they can do, and in some cases that has been assassination,” Crocker told reporters at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. “Clearly, these are horrific attacks, but they can also be interpreted as a sign of significant organizational weakness on the part of the adversary.”

Hamidi’s killing is the latest in a string of assassinations of senior civilian, police and military officials across the country in recent months. The Taliban has claimed responsibility for the prior attacks.

President Karzai’s half-brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, a controversial power broker, leader of the Popolzai tribe and head of the provincial council for Kandahar, was fatally shot two weeks ago at his heavily fortified house by one of his most trusted bodyguards, who also served as a mid-level police officer in the city.