Senior Afghan police intelligence chief shot dead

A senior Afghan intelligence chief was shot dead on his way home by unknown gunmen, near Kabul on Thursday.

KABUL: Gunmen have shot dead a senior Afghan police intelligence chief, spraying his vehicle with bullets as he was on his way home near Kabul, an official said on Thursday.

Mohammad Gul, director of the intelligence department of Kabul’s counter crime police branch, was shot dead along with one of his bodyguards late on Wednesday, branch chief Sayed Abdul Ghafar Sayedzada told an agency.

The gunmen sprayed Gul’s vehicle with bullets near his home in Paghman district, a picnic valley west of Kabul. “We don’t know yet who the attackers were, but we’re investigating this,” Sayedzada said.

Taliban militants have been blamed for similar assassinations but mostly in the lawless southern cities where their insurgency against the government of President Hamid Karzai is concentrated. No group had claimed responsibility for the murder, Sayedzada said.

Targeted assassinations have become more frequent in recent months, most notably in Kandahar city, capital of the eponymous province the Taliban regard as their heartland.

Supplementing roadside bombs and suicide attacks, assassinations have helped spread a blanket of fear over the southern city as US-led forces build on operations aimed at driving the Taliban from the region.

The US and Nato have 140,000 troops in Afghanistan fighting the nine-year war, with another 10,000 due for deployment, mostly in the south, in the coming weeks.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 9^th, 2010.