Taliban governor of Afghanistan's Balkh province killed in attack

KABUL (AFP) - The Taliban governor of Afghanistan's Balkh province, known for fighting against Islamic State jihadists, was killed in an attack at his office on Thursday, officials said.

The killing, a day after he met top government officials visiting from Kabul, makes Mohammad Dawood Muzammil one of the highest-ranking officials to have been slain since the Taliban stormed back to power in 2021. Violence across Afghanistan has dramatically dropped since the Taliban seized control, but the security situation has again deteriorated with IS claiming several deadly attacks.

"Two people, including Mohammad Dawood Muzammil, the governor of Balkh, have been killed in an explosion this morning," the province's police spokesman Asif Waziri told AFP, adding that the blast happened on the second floor of his office. He was "martyred in an explosion by the enemies of Islam", tweeted government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid.

Muzammil was initially appointed governor of the eastern province of Nangarhar, where he led the fight against IS jihadists, before being moved to Balkh last year. On Wednesday, he met two deputy prime ministers and other senior officials visiting Balkh to review a major irrigation project in northern Afghanistan, according to a government statement.

IS has emerged as the biggest security challenge to the Taliban government since last year, carrying out attacks against Afghan civilians as well as foreigners and foreign interests. Several attacks have rocked Balkh, including in the provincial city of Mazar-i-Sharif last year, some claimed by IS.

In January, a suicide bomber killed at least 10 people when he blew himself up near the foreign ministry in Kabul, in an attack claimed by IS. The Taliban and IS share an austere Sunni Islamist ideology, but the latter are fighting to establish a global "caliphate" instead of the Taliban's more inward-looking goal of ruling an independent Afghanistan.

At least five Chinese nationals were wounded in December when gunmen stormed a hotel popular with businesspeople in Kabul. That raid was claimed by IS, as was an attack on Pakistan's embassy in Kabul in December that Islamabad denounced as an "assassination attempt" against its ambassador.

Two Russian embassy staff members were killed in a suicide bombing outside their mission in September in another attack claimed by IS.