Taliban kill Afghan district governor
An Afghan district governor was shot dead Monday by two men on a motorcycle while a suicide bomber killed 10 Afghans in a crowded market in southern Afghanistan.
Insurgent Taliban movement claimed the killing of Afghan district governor, a government official said.
The governor of the volatile Andar district in the province of Ghazni, south of Kabul, was killed as he left his home, provincial government spokesman Ismail Jahangir told AFP.
"Abdul Rahim Desiwal was moving to Ghazni town ... when he was attacked by two motorcycle riders and he was he martyred and his guard was wounded," he said. "This is the Taliban's work."
A spokesman for the Taliban confirmed the militia had carried out the assassination.
"Our men killed Abdul Rahim Desiwal when he left his house," Zabihullah Mujahed said.
The Taliban, in government between 1996 and 2001, are waging an insurgency that has seen dozens of officials assassinated.
Meanwhile a suicide bomber apparently trying to target Afghan police detonated his explosives in a crowded market in southern Afghanistan on Monday, killing eight civilians and two policemen, an official said.
The attack in the central market in Musa Qala in Afghanistan's dangerous Helmand province also wounded 25 civilians and two police, said Helmand police chief Asadullah Sherzad. Six children were among the wounded.
Taliban and other militant suicide bombers frequently target Afghan and international military forces in their suicide attacks, but many more Afghan civilians typically die in the attacks than do government officials or military personnel.
In Kabul on Sunday, a suicide bomber attacked a German Embassy vehicle but killed two Afghan civilians, including a street sweeper.
A Taliban spokesman couldn't immediately be reached for comment regarding Monday's attack in Helmand. The Taliban claimed responsibility for Sunday's bombing in Kabul.
Taliban militants overran Musa Qala in February 2007 and held it until a massive US-British-Afghan operation in December 2007 dislodged the fighters. The town remains surrounded by Taliban and is in a dangerous region of Helmand where the Afghan government has little control.
Afghanistan has seen a spike in violence over the last two years. More than 5,900 people have died in insurgency-related violence this year, according to an Associated Press count based on figures from Afghan and Western officials.
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