KABUL – Gunmen killed a top adviser to Afghan president Hamid Karzai and a member of the country’s parliament in a residential district of Kabul yesterday, just days after the presidents brother was gunned down at home, officials said.
The spokesman for Kabul’s police chief said two or three armed men started a gun battle around 8pm at the house of presidential adviser Jan Mohammad Khan, in which Mr Khan, a former governor of southern Uruzgan province and close aide to the president, was killed
“The battle between gunmen and security forces is still going on,” spokesman Hashmat Stanekzai said.
Deputy Hashim Watanwal was also killed, said Mr Stanekzai and Obaidullah Barekzai, a member of parliament from Uruzgan province who had seen the bodies of both men being brought out.
Hours after the attack began, gunfire could still be heard in western Karte Seh district, home of the country’s parliament, many Afghan politicians and media and some embassies.
There was a heavy presence of security troops in the area and the streets leading to Mr Khan’s home were cordoned off.
The attack came on the day that Afghanistan began a long-promised transition to control of its own security, but the process kicked off in the relatively peaceful central province of Bamiyan, half a days drive from Kabul.
A surge of US troops has helped improve security in the south of the country over the last year, but there has been spreading insecurity in once peaceful northern areas, fiercer fighting in the east and record civilian casualties.
The first half of this year was the deadliest six months for civilians in the last decade of conflict, with nearly 1,500 killed, the United Nations said in a recent report.
The handover from New Zealand forces to Afghan police – there is no Afghan army presence in the province – is the first step in a process aiming to put the Afghan army and police in control across the country by the end of 2014.
The change is critical to Afghanistan’s long-term security at a time when Western nations are wearying of the cost in lives and cash of the near-decade-long war, both the Afghan government and its Western backers say.
“The start of transition is the first step in Afghan forces and Afghan people taking care of their own destiny,” said Waheed Omer, spokesman for President Karzai.