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Gunmen kill women's
rights leader in Afghanistan
The Associated Press
Published: September 25, 2006
KABUL, Afghanistan Two gunmen on a motorbike killed the
provincial director of Afghanistan's Ministry of Women's Affairs outside
her home in the southern city of Kandahar on Monday, officials said.
Safia Ahmed-jan was slain outside the front gate of her home as she was
walking to her office, said Tawfiq ul-Ulhakim Parant, senior adviser to
the women's ministry in Kabul.
She was wearing a burqa when she was shot, Parant said.
Aleem Sidique, spokesman for the United Nations Assistance Mission in
Afghanistan, said the U.N. was "appalled at this senseless murder."
"What we need to see in Afghanistan is peace, development and progress,"
Sidique said. "We share the sentiment of the majority of Afghan people who
are appalled at this killing."
Ahmed-jan was known for being an active proponent of women's rights and
for staying in Kandahar even through the country's worst years of war.
In other violence, two people were killed in eastern Afghanistan on Monday
when their car exploded 10 kilometers (five miles) west of the eastern
city of Khost, said Gen. Mohammed Ayub, the provincial police chief.
The two were planning to conduct a bombing in the town, but their
explosive device went off prematurely on an open road, Ayub said. There
were no other casualties.
Some 20 militants attacked the house of a district chief in neighboring
Paktika province late Sunday, killing him, said Sayed Jamal, spokesman for
the provincial governor.
Authorities launched a search for the perpetrators Monday, recovering the
district chief's vehicle and detaining nine people for questioning, Jamal
said.
Suspected Taliban militants, meanwhile, attacked and destroyed a medical
clinic in Yaqoubi district of the eastern Khost province on Sunday, Ayub
said.
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