KANADAHAR, Aug 21: Taliban insurgents on Sunday shot dead a pro-government Muslim cleric and his companion in restive southern Afghanistan, an official said.

Mullah Abdullah Malang, deputy head of the religious council of Panjwaey district in Kandahar province, and his colleague were shot dead by two men on a motorcycle as they left a mosque, said district chief Niaz Mohammad Sarhadi.

“It’s the work of the Taliban,” he said.

He said the attackers fled after shooting the pair. The ousted militia is active in Panjwaey.

It was the Taliban’s fifth attack on pro-government Muslim clerics in the past three months.

In May Maulvi Abdullah Fayyaz, head of the Kandahar Islamic Council, was gunned down near his house in the city.

Twenty-one people died when a suicide bomber struck his funeral prayers on June 1 in the southern city, which was previously the stronghold of the Taliban.

Fayyaz had spoken out against one-eyed fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, who has been on the run since the US-led invasion of Afghanistan toppled the fundamentalist militia in late 2001.

A month later another leading member of the Kandahar Islamic Council, Maulvi Mohammad Musbah, was ambushed and shot dead outside the city.—AFP