Bombing kills Afghan tribal leader.2/22/2010 1:19:48 PM At least 15 people have died after a suicide bomber Noun 1. suicide bomber - a terrorist who blows himself up in order to kill or injure other people act of terrorism, terrorism, terrorist act - the calculated use of violence (or the threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political blew himself up among a tribal leaders and government officials meeting recently returned Afghan refugees Afghan refugees (known as Muhajir Afghans in South Asia) are people who fled Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion in 1979 and during the civil war that followed. Since the early 1980s to the late 1990s, there were approximately 3 million Afghan refugees staying in in eastern Nangarhar province. Among the dead in Monday's attack was Haji Zaman Ghamsharik, a local tribal leader and former mujahidin commander, as well as the head of the province's refugee ministry. Al Jazeera's James Bays, reporting from Lashkar gah in Helmand province, said that it appeared that Haji Zaman was the target of the attack. "It's certain, I think, that the Taliban wanted him dead," he said. The bomber, wearing an explosives vest, apparently walked up to the gathering in Khogyani district Khogyani is a district in the south of Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan, bordering on Pakistan. Its population, which is 100% Pashtun, was estimated at 146,852 in 2002, of whom 58,700 were children under 12. before detonating his device, police said. Tora Bora role Haji Zaman was a local commander in the Tora Bora mountains when US forces launched an operation to capture or kill Osama bin Laden Osama bin Laden: see bin Laden, Osama. , the al-Qaeda leader, as he attempted to flee after the fall of the Talliban in 2001. "Around that time Haji Zaman was at first the core commander and then the police chief in that area, he was alongside the Americans when they staged that failed operation," Bays said. "After that, there were suspicions that he may have helped al-Qaeda escape Tora Bora and he was sent by Hamid Karzai's government into exile. He spent a lot of time in exile in Pakistan. "It was only last year at the presidential elections, as Hamid Karzai Hamid Karzai (Persian and Pashto: حامد کرزي) (b. December 24, 1957) is the current President of Afghanistan, since December 7, 2004. He became the dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime. was trying to get support from all kinds of different groups in Afghanistan, that Haji Zaman was invited back." A number of civilians were also reported to be among the dead in the suicide blast. Nato air raid Monday's suicide attack suicide attack suicide n → Selbstmordanschlag m came just hours after it emerged that a Nato air raid had killed at least 33 civilians in Uruzgan province on Sunday. Nato on Sunday confirmed that it fired on a group of vehicles that it believed contained fighters, only to discover later that women and children were in the cars. Isaf, Nato's force in Afghanistan, did not provide a figure of how many died. The deaths in Uruzgan came on the heels of an emotional appeal by Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's president, for international troops to try harder to prevent civilian deaths. He told parliament on Saturday that although progress was being made in limiting civilian casualties, people were still dying. He held up a picture of an eight-year-old girl who lost 12 relatives in a Nato rocket attack during the second day of the assault on Marjah - Operation Moshtarak - which began on February 13. The latest deaths came as a joint Afghan, Nato and US force battled Taliban fighters in Marjah, in southern Helmand province, in an attempt to take the town and surrounding areas from their control. Aljazeera.net 2003 - 2009 Provided by Syndigate.info an Albawaba.com company |
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