Gunmen killed a high-ranking local Taliban official in Afghanistan’s northwestern province of Badakhshan on Tuesday in a rare targeted attack in the country.
Zabihullah Amiri, Badakhshan’s director of information and culture, was shot by two gunmen as he traveled from a local district to the provincial capital, Faizabad, according to a statement from the Information Ministry. Security guards opened fire on the attackers immediately following the incident, killing one and capturing the second. Authorities are investigating the killing.
Targeted killings of high-ranking Taliban officials have been infrequent since the group seized power in Afghanistan in 2021 following the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces.
In December 2024, the country’s refugee minister, Khalil Haqqani, died in a suicide bombing in Kabul. Haqqani was the uncle of Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani. In June 2023, a car bomb in Faizabad killed Badakhshan’s deputy governor, Nisar Ahmad Ahmadi, and his driver. The Islamic State group’s regional affiliate claimed responsibility for that attack and a subsequent bombing that killed at least 13 people at a memorial service for Ahmadi.
Earlier in 2023, the governor of the northern province of Balkh was killed in a bomb attack at his office in March.