KABUL, 8 October 2006 — Unidentified gunmen shot dead two German journalists in northern Afghanistan in the early hours of yesterday, the Interior Ministry said. The two, a man and a woman, were shot in their tent in the province of Baghlan at about 1:20 a.m., said a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, which handles police affairs.
The International Security Assistance Force spokesman, Dominic White, the two had been working “in connection with ISAF” until last Wednesday, when they went traveling on their own. The Pakistani news agency AIP reported that both journalists were found murdered in a tent around 150 kilometers south of the northern provincial capital Baghlan.
Meanwhile, a soldier with the NATO-led ISAF was killed in an attack in southern Afghanistan yesterday, NATO said. According to an ISAF statement, the soldier was killed following the ignition of an explosive device and small arms fire in Panjwayi district 20 kilometers west of Kandahar city yesterday morning.
The nationality of the soldier was not released, though there around 2,000 Canadian soldiers based in Kandahar under NATO-led ISAF making the Canadian contingent the largest part of the ISAF in Kandahar province. The latest violence in a bloody Taleban insurgency came exactly five years after the international offensive that toppled the hard-liners from government was launched with aerial strikes on Oct. 7, 2001.
The Taleban’s fugitive leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, is alive and leading the anti-government insurgency from inside Afghanistan, a purported top spokesman for the militant chief said yesterday. “Mullah Omar has been in Afghanistan and still is in Afghanistan and will remain here to lead the jihad (holy war) against the American troops,” said a man claiming to be Taleban spokesman Abdul-Hai Mutmaen.
