2 articles: Taliban assassins kill Afghanistan's most high-profile policewoman, Malalai Kakar (she led Kandahar city's department of crimes against women); her son was also badly injured
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Afghanistan's most high-profile police officer Malalai Kakar speaks at her office in Kandahar on September 25. 2008. Taliban gunmen shot dead Kakar and wounded her teenaged son as she left home to go to work.
(AFP/File)Taliban assassins kill ranking Afghan policewoman
By RAHIM FAIEZ, Associated Press Writer
Sun Sep 28, 2:50 PM ET
Two Taliban assassins on a motorbike shot and killed a senior policewoman as she left for work in Afghanistan's largest southern city Sunday and gravely wounded her son.
Malalai Kakar, 41, who led Kandahar city's department of crimes against women, was leaving home Sunday when she was killed, said Zalmai Ayubi, spokesman for the Kandahar provincial governor. Her 18-year-old son was wounded, he said.
The Taliban claimed responsibility.
Militants frequently attack projects, schools and businesses run by women. The hard-line Taliban regime, which was ousted in the 2001 U.S.-led invasion, did not allow women outside the home without a male escort.
President Hamid Karzai condemned the assassination, as did the European Union, which said it was "appalled by the brutal targeting" of Kakar.
"Any murder of a police officer is to be condemned, but the killing of a female officer whose service was not only to her country, but to Afghan women, to whom Ms. Kakar served as an example, is particularly abhorrent," the EU said in a statement.
Elsewhere in Kandahar province, a suicide bomber on a motorbike attacked a border police convoy in Spin Boldak district, killing three policemen and three civilians, said the regional border police chief, Abdul Razzaq.
The blast wounded 17 others, including 15 civilians and two officers, Razzaq said.
Taliban militants use suicide attacks in their campaign against Afghan and foreign troops in the country. The majority of the victims in such bombings are civilians.
NATO's International Security Assistance Force said one of its soldiers was killed Sunday in an insurgent attack in eastern Afghanistan. The alliance provided no other details. Most soldiers in the east are American.
In other violence, an Afghan police official said Sunday that a U.S.-led coalition killed three civilians in an operation apparently targeting a suicide bomb cell in eastern Afghanistan. That claim was disputed by the coalition, which said its troops killed two al-Qaida militants.
Gen. Abdul Jalal Jalal, the provincial police chief in the eastern province of Kunar, said airstrikes hit a compound in the province's Asmar district, killing three civilians.
The U.S.-led coalition said its troops targeted an al-Qaida cell responsible for a number of bomb attacks in Kunar province.
The coalition said two militants were killed after a firefight in one of the compounds. It said no civilians were killed. Capt. Scott Miller, a U.S. spokesman, said artillery strikes were used in the fight but no airstrikes.
It was impossible to independently verify either report, due to the remoteness of the area.
Civilian deaths are a highly sensitive topic in Afghanistan. Karzai has long pleaded with international troops to avoid civilian deaths in its operations.
The Afghan government and U.N. say that an Aug. 22 U.S. operation killed some 90 civilians in the western province of Herat, a strike that strained U.S.-Afghan relations.
An original U.S. investigation found that up to 35 militants and seven civilians were killed in that strike. However, a new investigation was opened — and is now under way — after video images emerged appearing to show many more dead than the U.S. had acknowledged.
The coalition said separately that it killed six militants and detained eight in two operations on Saturday.
Article: HERE
Afghan policemen in Kabul. Taliban militants shot dead the most high-profile female police officer in Afghanistan Sunday and killed four more policemen in other attacks.
(AFP/File/Shah Marai)Taliban kill Afghanistan's most high-profile policewoman
by Nasrat Shoaib
Sun Sep 28, 1:40 PM ET
Taliban militants shot dead the most high-profile female police officer in Afghanistan Sunday and killed four more policemen in other attacks.
The new violence, part of a Taliban-led insurgency sweeping Afghanistan, came as security officials said they had killed about 30 rebels in various operations, although there were allegations that civilians were among the dead.
Malalai Kakar, the most senior policewoman in the southern city of Kandahar and a mother of six, was shot dead by gunmen who had been waiting outside her home, government officials said.
Her teenaged son, who was driving her to work, was badly hurt.
"Malalai Kakar died in front of her house. Her son was wounded," Kandahar province government spokesman Zalmay Ayoobi said.
A doctor in the city's main hospital said Kakar, aged around 40, was shot in the head. "She died on the spot and her son was badly injured...," he said on condition of anonymity.
A spokesman for the extremist Taliban movement said the assassins were from his group.
"We killed Malalai Kakar," spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi told AFP. "She was our target and we successfully eliminated our target."
President Hamid Karzai said in a statement the killing was an "act of cowardice" by Afghanistan's "enemies."
The European Union in Afghanistan said Kakar had been an example to others in her country and her murder was "particularly abhorrent."
Kakar was regularly profiled in international media and was known for her courage in one of Afghanistan's most conservative provinces.
She headed a team of at least 10 women police officers and had reportedly received numerous death threats.
Kandahar is the birthplace of the extremist Taliban, who rose to take control of government in 1996 before being removed in a US-led invasion in 2001.
In another attack on police, a suicide bomber on a motorbike blew himself up near two police vehicles in the border town of Spin Boldak near Kandahar, police said.
Three policemen and three civilians were killed, and 17 people wounded, provincial police chief Matiullah Khan Qate told AFP.
Ahmadi, the Taliban spokesman, confirmed that his militia was involved.
In the eastern province of Paktika meanwhile, a police vehicle hit a roadside bomb and one policeman was killed and one wounded, provincial police said. Taliban said they were responsible.
Police officers are among the Taliban's main targets, with around 750 killed in the past six months, according to the interior ministry.
In other violence, a government official said police had ambushed and killed 17 Taliban insurgents in Helmand province on Saturday.
The US-led coalition said meanwhile it killed six militants in eastern Afghanistan the same day.
And an Afghan army colonel said 10 Taliban were killed in a battle in the southwestern province of Farah Sunday.
The coalition said it was investigating allegations it killed three civilians in a pre-dawn raid on a home in the eastern province of Kunar, although it believed the dead were Al-Qaeda operatives.
"Initial reports show no civilian or coalition casualties," it said in a statement, adding, "The incident is still under investigation."
Article: HERE
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