Assassinated Afghan minister Abdul Rahman was buried today after a somber funeral procession led by interim leader Mr Hamid Karzai as fresh violence in the capital raised new fears about the country's fragile security.
Several hundred troops, their rifles fitted with bayonets, escorted the coffin carrying the body of the interim government's air transport and tourism minister, whose killing the country's leadership said was plotted by senior government officials.
"This event again proves that we need to save ourselves from the oppression of the gun and the force of the knife," Mr Karzai told hundreds of rain-soaked mourners at a public burial ground on the edge of Kabul.
Saudi Arabia, a US official said, has assured Afghanistan it will return three Afghan officials named as suspects in the killing, which happened late on Thursday at Kabul airport. At least three more suspects have been detained in Afghanistan.
The murder, an attack on international peacekeepers today and chaos outside a soccer match in Kabul yesterday, underscored the problems facing Afghanistan's UN-backed interim government as it struggles to reconcile rival factions and rebuild a volatile nation recovering from years of war.
Today, an observation post of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) came under fire briefly in the Afghan capital, the first such attack on foreign forces in Kabul.