Afghan official says bomb kills provincial council member
KABUL — A suicide bomber killed a provincial council member in northeast Kunar province, while a daylong gun battle in neighbouring Badakhshan province left four civilians dead and another eight wounded, Afghan officials said Friday.
Kunar provincial council member Shahwali Hemat was on his way to a local cemetery to attend a funeral Friday when a suicide bomber approached him and exploded his device, Kunar Police Chief spokesman Farid Dihqan told The Associated Press. A second person was also killed in the explosion and another one was wounded. No one immediately took responsibility for the attack, but the Taliban are active in Kunar province.
Also hiding in Kunar province’s towering mountains are members of Pakistan’s militant Tehrik-e-Taliban, who fled a Pakistan military operation in the Swat Valley and found refuge in Kunar’s rugged terrain. Among the Pakistani militants hiding in Afghanistan’s Kunar province is Mullah Fazlullah, the Taliban leader who is believed to have masterminded the attack on Pakistan’s Malala Yousafzai, the young Nobel laureate and champion of girls’ education worldwide. Yousafzai is in Pakistan on her first visit home since the shooting in 2012.
Pakistan and Afghanistan routinely accuse each other of harbouring the other’s militant enemies.