KABUL: The Taliban on Monday claimed the overnight killing of one of Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s key advisers, who died along with a lawmaker in an attack on his home in Kabul.

Jan Mohammad Khan, the former governor of southern Uruzgan province and a key ally of the embattled president, was killed along with an MP for Uruzgan.

“We killed Jan Mohammad Khan. We made him pay for his deeds,” Taliban’s spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahed, told AFP by telephone from an undisclosed location.

Khan, a long-standing Karzai ally and key tribal chieftain, was killed in the attack that the interior ministry said was carried out by two assailants.

The gunmen targeted the house late Sunday and a standoff lasted until the early hours of Monday. One police officer and the two assailants were also killed, the interior ministry said.

The assassination comes less than a week after the president’s half-brother Ahmed Wali Karzai was shot dead by a close friend at his home in the southern province of Kandahar, in an attack also claimed by the Taliban.

A senior government official speaking anonymously told AFP that Khan’s death was a major blow for the US-backed leader.

“He was very close to the president. His death is as important as Ahmad Wali Karzai’s death,” the official said.

Just hours before Sunday’s attack, a ceremony was held in central Bamyan province marking the start of the transition of security duties from Nato forces to Afghans, a process aimed at leaving the country free of foreign troops by 2014.

Sunday was also the last day in Afghanistan for top US commander General David Petraeus.

Experts say Khan had a reputation for brutality and double-dealing with tribal rivals, falsely accusing some of being Taliban, and Dutch forces taking over Uruzgan operations in 2006 insisted on his removal as governor.

According to the independent website afghan-bios.info, Khan’s nephew runs a 3,000-strong militia in Uruzgan that he had inherited from his uncle.

Khan escaped a previous assassination attempt on August 4 when a motorcycle bomb exploded by his convoy in the southern province.