TALOQAN, Afghanistan, (Reuters) – A large bomb blast tore through a mosque in northern Afghanistan yesterday, killing a provincial governor and at least a dozen others attending prayers, in the highest-profile assassination in over a year.
The death of Mohammed Omar, the governor of Kunduz, leaves a power vacuum in the heart of the country’s once peaceful northeast, where the insurgency is strengthening its grip as the war with NATO-led foreign troops enters its tenth year.
The outspoken former militia fighter was a staunch opponent of the Taliban and had fought to prevent Kunduz — the last city to fall to U.S.-backed Northern Alliance forces after the U.S. invasion in 2001 — from becoming an insurgent safe-haven.
The blast blew the windows out of the mosque and spattered shoes left by worshippers outside it with blood. The imam also died and at least 20 people were wounded.
“I had just finished my prayers when a huge blast knocked me down,” said Mohammad Aslam, a student who was in hospital with shrapnel wounds. “I don’t know how I was brought here.”
Omar’s killers targeted him in Taloqan, the capital of his native Takhar province, where he kept a home. It borders Kunduz and is considered safer.
Hours after the attack there were conflicting casualty reports. Takhar police said the blast killed Omar and 15 others. A governor’s spokesman said 12 people died and more than 30 were wounded. President Hamid Karzai’s office put the toll at 21.
Omar had narrowly escaped two previous attempts on his life — a roadside bomb just two months ago that destroyed a police vehicle in his convoy and an ambush last year. Attacks during religious ceremonies are relatively rare in Afghanistan.
Insurgents have not killed a provincial governor since a 2008 roadside bombing near Kabul, and Omar was the most senior government victim of the war since the assassination in September 2009 of the deputy intelligence chief, Abdullah Laghmani.
Lower-level murders are common however. The deputy governor of Ghazni province was killed with five others in late September by a suicide bomber in a rickshaw, and Omar’s brother, a local police chief, was killed in May last year.
