As per latest news, a senior member of Afghanistan’s High Peace Council worked as negotiator to hold peace talks with Taliban was shot dead from a passing car in Kabul Sunday morning.
Arsala Rahmani, close adviser to President Hamid Karzai is the second senior Afghan official to be killed since in September, when former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani, was killed by a purported Taliban suicide bomber posing as a peace envoy.
Mr. Rahmani was hit by a single bullet from a passing car just outside his home in Western Kabul while he was leaving home for meeting.
Talking to media, his grandson, Mohammed Wariss said, shortly as he left his home Sunday in a SUV with his driver and another relative, a Toyota Corolla came alongside their vehicle, shot him by “the bullet passed through his left arm and hit his heart.” And he died in the hospital.
According to source report, Mr. Rahmani who had been ruling as Taliban’s former deputy minister of education since 1996, but left the Islamic militia in 2001.
Rahmani who joined with the U.S.-backed Afghan government in wake to table the Taliban insurgents, was very important personality as “key negotiators” for establishing the peace talks with Taliban officials.
However his assassination is likely a major loss of US backed Afghan govt’s peace efforts that have been trying over the past few years.
“We condemn this cowardly assassination in the strongest possible terms. No one but the sworn enemies of peace in Afghanistan and the region would commit such a heinous act. Mr. Rahmani gave his life to a cause that’s the just aspiration of the Afghan people.
His work will continue,” Janan Mosazai, the spokesman for the Foreign Ministry told reporters.
Taking the responsibility over Rahmani’s assassination for attack, Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman said, “We deny responsibility, but we are targeting HPC members” as part of posing against the U.S. and the Afghan government.
Moreover earlier this year, Taliban officials closed talks after U.S.-led coalition refused to fulfill their demand as to release five senior Taliban members in exchange for a U.S. Soldier being held by the insurgent group.
