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KANDAHAR, July 3: A pro-government Islamic scholar died after being shot by suspected Taliban insurgents in southern Afghanistan on Sunday, the second such attack in just over a month, officials said.
Molvi Mohammad Nabi Masah, a member of Afghanistan’s influential Ulema Council, was leaving his home 10km east of the southern city of Kandahar when he was shot in his car at long range, Kandahar police chief Ayub Salangi said.
He was rushed to hospital at the US military base at Kandahar but later died of his wounds, Ahmad Wali Karzai, the brother of President Hamid Karzai and the head of Kandahar’s provincial council, told Reuters.
An intelligence official in Kandahar said the cleric had been shot twice in the chest. Salangi said Taliban insurgents were behind the attack.
In late May, gunmen on a motorcycle shot dead another member of the council, prominent anti-Taliban cleric Molvi Abdullah Fayaz, in Kandahar.
A suicide bomber hit the funeral prayers of Fayaz in a mosque on June 1, killing 20 people.
Sunday’s attack appeared to be the latest in a stepped up campaign by the Taliban and their militant allies to spread instability ahead of Sept. 18 parliamentary elections.
US SOLDIER RESCUED: A US special forces soldier has been rescued five days after he went missing in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan when suspected Taliban rebels shot down a US helicopter trying to extract him and his teammates, television reports said on Sunday.
US military officials told CNN that the rescued soldier managed to “evade the enemy” and has been successfully rescued by US forces.
CNN reported there was no word on the fate of three other soldiers who were part of the same special forces reconnaissance team missing since the MH-47 Chinook chopper was downed on Tuesday in rebel-infested Kunar province near the Pakistani border.
The military said it believed a rocket propelled grenade hit the helicopter.—Reuters/AFP
