A suicide bomber killed the mayor of Afghanistan's Qandahar city on Wednesday, two weeks after the assassination of Afghan President Hamid Karzai's brother in the same city created a power vacuum in the country's turbulent south. The death of Mayor Ghulam Haidar Hamidi is the latest in a string of assassinations of Karzai allies.
While it is unclear if all were the work of insurgents, the killings have stoked instability as foreign troops begin withdrawing ahead of Afghan forces taking full security control by the end of 2014. Hamidi, 65, was killed and another person wounded when a suicide bomber detonated his explosives in a corridor near Hamidi's office, said Zalmay Ayoubi, the spokesman for the Kandahar provincial governor.
"It appears the bomber was carrying the bomb in his turban," Ayoubi said. Two of Hamidi's deputy mayors were killed in attacks by insurgents last year. Kandahar Police Chief Abdul Razaq said Hamidi was meeting elders from a district of Kandahar city when one of them got close to the mayor and detonated a bomb hidden in his turban.
Taliban spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi initially said it was too early to tell what had happened but later claimed responsibility for killing Hamidi on behalf of the militant Islamist group. Ahmadi said the mayor had been on the Taliban's hit-list and that the main motivation for the attack was the deaths of the woman and children on Tuesday when the buildings were destroyed.