Afghan official killed
The director was gunned down while riding in his car
The Taliban kills director of Afghanistan’s government media center.
KABUL, Afghanistan — The Taliban ambushed and killed the director of Afghanistan’s government media center on Friday in the capital, Kabul, the latest killing of a government official just days after an assassination attempt on the country’s acting defense minister.
The slaying comes amid significant Taliban advances. In a major but symbolic victory, the Taliban on Friday appeared to have taken their first provincial capital — the city of Zaranj in southern Nimroz province. The government, however, claimed there was still fierce fighting around key infrastructure in the city and that Zaranj had not fallen.
But the Taliban posted images on social media showing insurgents inside the local airport and posing for photographs at the entrance to the city. Nimroz is sparsely populated in a region that’s mainly desert and Zaranj, the provincial capital, has about 50,000 residents. The province’s governor, Abdul Karim Barahawi, fled Zaranj for refuge in the peaceful Chahar Burjak district.
The Taliban have been surging for months in Afghanistan, taking swaths of land as U.S. and NATO forces complete their final pullout from the country by the end of the month. The battles intensified lately as the Taliban laid siege to provincial capitals in southern and western Afghanistan, after capturing district after district and even seizing several key border crossings.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told The Associated Press that the insurgents killed Dawa Khan Menapal, the chief of the Afghan government’s press operations for local and foreign media. He had previously been a deputy spokesman for Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.
The assassination took place during weekly Friday prayers in Kabul, according to the Interior Ministry’s deputy spokesman, Said Hamid Rushan. After the shooting, Afghan forces fanned out across the neighborhood where Menapal was gunned down while riding in his car. Mujahid put out a statement claiming responsibility and said Menapal “was killed in a special attack” by the mujahedeen, or holy warriors.
The Taliban often target government officials and those they perceive as working for the government or foreign forces, though several recent attacks have been claimed by the Islamic State group.
Earlier this week, a Taliban bombing targeted the acting defense minister, Bismillah Khan Mohammadi. The attack in a heavily guarded upscale Kabul neighborhood late Tuesday killed at least eight people and wounded 20. The minister was unharmed. The bombing was followed by a gunbattle that also killed four Taliban fighters. The militants said the attack was to avenge Taliban fighters killed during government offensives in rural provinces.
Meanwhile, Afghan and U.S. aircraft pounded Taliban positions in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand province on Friday, as the insurgents closed a major border crossing with neighboring Pakistan.
Residents in Helmand’s contested provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, said airstrikes destroyed a market in the center of the city — an area controlled by the Taliban.
Afghan officials say the Taliban now control nine out of the 10 districts of the city.
Afghanistan’s elite commandos have deployed to Lashkar Gah, backed up by airstrikes by the Afghan and U.S. air forces.
The Taliban began sweeping across Afghanistan at an unexpected speed after the U.S. and NATO began their final pullout in late April. The bitter fighting has displaced hundreds of thousands of Afghans, now living in miserable conditions in improvised shelters and makeshift camps in the southern, desert-like
environment — brutally hot days and cold nights. Inside the cities where fighting is underway, thousands are trapped and unable to move from their homes.
In the southern city of Kandahar, the capital of the province with the same name, hundreds are sheltering in makeshift camps, wondering where they will get food for their children. In Lashkar Gah, the shuttered office of Action Against Hunger, a global humanitarian organization, was hit in an airstrike on Thursday, the group said.
More than half of Afghanistan’s
421 districts and district centers are now in Taliban hands. While many of the districts are in remote regions, some are deeply strategic, giving the Taliban control of lucrative border crossings with Iran, Tajikistan and Pakistan.
At a special meeting of the U.N Security Council on Friday, Deborah Lyons, the U.N. envoy to Afghanistan, said the human toll of the worsening fighting was deeply disturbing.
“The war in Afghanistan has entered a new, deadlier, and more destructive phase,” she said.