KABUL, 18 October 2005 — Suspected Taleban militants in Afghanistan gunned down two pro-government religious leaders, officials said yesterday, days after a bomb killed another leading imam in a mosque. Maulavi Noor Ahmad Jan, head of the Religious Council - a government advisory body - in eastern Kunar province, was shot dead by attackers who broke into his home late Sunday, provincial police chief Abdul Ghafar told AFP.
Jan had been an outspoken critic of militants loyal to the ousted Taleban regime who are waging an insurgency against the government. A neighbor said Jan had received death threats warning him to stop preaching against the Taleban. A member of the Religious Council for troubled southern Helmand province was also shot dead late Sunday, provincial government spokesman Haji Mohammed Wali told AFP.
Maulavi Mohammad Gul had been walking home from Ramadan prayers in the provincial capital Lashkar-Gah when attackers shot him, Wali said. A purported spokesman for the Taleban told AFP the attack was carried out by the hard-liners, who launched their insurgency after being pushed from power in a US-led campaign in late 2001.
On Friday, a bomb killed an influential pro-government cleric on the Khost province Religious Council during prayers in his mosque. President Hamid Karzai said the murder of Mulla Mohammad Khan was an attack on Islam. There have been a string of attacks on Afghanistan’s religious leaders in the past months.
In a significant attack, the Taleban claimed responsibility for the May killing of cleric Maulavi Fayyaz who was shot dead in southern Kandahar province. During Fayyaz’s funeral a week later, a suicide bomber killed 21 people. The Taleban spokesman said the militants were also behind the killing of an intelligence director and a policeman in Helmand’s Sangeen district Sunday. Two policemen were wounded in the attack.
Another intelligence officer was shot dead in southern Zabul province, a police officer in the province said on condition of anonymity. The Taleban insurgency has been blamed for around 1,400 deaths this year, most of them of militants.
