Afghan tribal elder killed in suicide bombing
Source: LA TIMES
Elder Malik Zareen was 'struggling for peace,' Afghan President Hamid Karzai says, condemning the attack in Kunar province, which killed a dozen people, including five children
 Malik Zareen, a leading tribal elder, was among those killed by a suicide bombing in Kunar province. (Afzal Shah, EPA) |
Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan—
A suicide bomber killed a dozen people, including a leading tribal elder and five children, after a meeting Wednesday in an eastern province of Afghanistan where U.S. forces have battled insurgents in recent weeks.
President Hamid Karzai and NATO officials condemned the morning attack on Malik Zareen, an elder who the Afghan leader said was "struggling for peace and solving people's problems."
"Organizers of this brutal attack showed that they fear these elders who understand them and their wrong and inhuman intentions," Karzai said in a statement. "By killing them, they want to silence the peaceful voice of the people of Afghanistan and undermine the strength of the country."
Police and local officials said it was unclear who carried out the attack in the Asmaar district of Kunar province, where the insurgency is well entrenched. A Taliban spokesman said the group was not responsible for the bombing, but the area is also home to a number of militant groups, including the Taliban-allied Haqqani network and Hezb-i-Islami, led by veteran mujahedin commander Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.
"This attack demonstrates how desperate insurgents are to prevent progress by targeting Afghanistan's traditional leaders and elders," U.S. Navy Rear Adm. Harold "Hal" Pittman, a spokesman for NATO forces, said in a statement.
Zareen, a former mujahedin commander who fought the Soviets in the 1980s, had a good relationship with NATO forces in the area and with Afghanistan's central government, according to the chairman of the Kunar provincial council, Haji Mia Hassan. Zareen had been targeted before by local enemies, Hassan said, but had not been singled out for attack by the Taliban or warlords.
Zareen and other tribal elders were attacked as they left a house where they had been meeting; the suicide bomber mingled with them in a cemetery near the house and detonated a vest packed with explosives, said the local police chief, Gen. Khalilullah Ziayi.
In addition to those killed, seven people were injured, Ziayi said.
Kunar province has been an insurgent stronghold, and 147 NATO personnel have been killed there since 2001, according to the independent website icasualties.org. The province recently has seen heavy clashes as Afghan soldiers and NATO International Security Assistance Forces attempted to rout insurgents and foreign fighters who had crossed the border from Pakistan's western tribal regions to attack isolated U.S. outposts
Six U.S. soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division were killed March 29 in the province's Marawa district during a two-week offensive aimed at recapturing areas that insurgents used to transport supplies and fighters across the border. At least 80 insurgents were killed in the offensive, though it was unclear how many might have been foreign fighters, according to Kunar provincial Gov. Sayed Fazlullah Wahidi.
Also in the east Wednesday, a NATO soldier was killed by a roadside bomb. Military officials did not disclose the soldier's nationality or location of the blast. So far this year, at least 121 NATO troops have been killed in Afghanistan, including 85 Americans, according to icasualties.org.
Special correspondents Hashmat Baktash and Aimal Yaqoubi in Kabul contributed to this report.
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