Bomb kills three, including provincial governor, in Afghanistan
Mohammad Dawood Muzammil’s assassination comes a day after he met top officials from the capital Kabul.
A bomb attack in Afghanistan’s northern Balkh province killed three people, including the Taliban governor, police said.
“Two people, including Mohammad Dawood Muzammil, the governor of Balkh, were killed in an explosion this morning,” police spokesman Asif Waziri said on Thursday.
Waziri said the blast occurred on the second floor of his office in the provincial capital of Mazar-i-Sharif.
“It was a suicide bombing. We have no information on how the suicide bomber reached the governor’s office,” he said, adding that two people were also injured.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but a regional affiliate of the ISIL group is a major rival of the ruling Taliban.
The assassination of Muzammil, known for his opposition to ISIL in the area, came a day after he met top officials visiting from the capital, Kabul.
The assassination has made Muzammil one of the highest-ranking figures killed since the Taliban returned to power in 2021.
Violence across Afghanistan has dropped dramatically since the Taliban took control, but the security situation has deteriorated again as ISIL claims several deadly attacks.
Authorities deployed extra security at the governorate and banned journalists from taking pictures, an AFP news agency correspondent from near the site of the explosion reported.
Muzammil was “tortured in an explosion by the enemies of Islam,” Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid tweeted.
Muzammil was initially appointed governor of eastern Nangarhar province, where he led the fight against IS, before being transferred to Balkh last year.
According to a government statement, on Wednesday he met with two deputy prime ministers and other senior officials who visited Balkh to view a major irrigation project in northern Afghanistan.
ISIL has emerged as the Taliban government’s biggest security challenge since last year, launching attacks against Afghan citizens as well as foreigners and foreign interests.
ISIL says it fights for the establishment of a global Islamic “caliphate” rather than the Taliban’s more inward-looking goal of ruling an independent Afghanistan.
Several attacks have rocked Balkh, including in Mazar-i-Sharif last year, some claimed by the armed group.
In January, a suicide bomber killed at least ten people when he blew himself up near the foreign ministry in Kabul in an attack claimed by the group.
In December, at least five Chinese were injured when gunmen stormed a hotel popular with businessmen in Kabul. ISIL claimed responsibility for the raid.
Another attack on Pakistan’s embassy in Kabul in December, which Islamabad denounced as an “attempted assassination” against the ambassador, was also claimed by the group.
Two Russian embassy employees were killed in a suicide bombing outside their mission in September.