By Xinhua,
Kabul : Militants in Afghanistan’s eastern Khost province gunned down a district chief along with his four bodyguards Sunday, provincial administration spokesman Khyber Pashtun said.
“Mirza Jan Nimgali, district chief of Qalandar district, was on the way to his office at 3:30 p.m. when Taliban insurgents ambushed his vehicle, killing him and his four bodyguards on the spot,” Pashtun told Xinhua. He did not give more details.
The past two weeks saw continued bombings and attacks in the country’s eastern provinces, where Taliban or al-Qaida related militants were said to have bases.
Earlier on Sunday morning, a blast attack occurred near a UN office in Khost city, the provincial capital of Khost, wounding a civilian.
Anti-government insurgents have intensified their guerrilla-style attacks against government interests and local-based foreign troops and more than 1,500 people had been killed in Taliban-related violence and conflicts this year.
Escalating insurgency-related conflicts and violence in Afghanistan claimed 8,000 lives last year, a bloodiest one since the hard-line Taliban regime’s collapse in 2001.