Four govt employees killed in Kabul

KABUL (Tolo News): Four employees of the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development (MRRD) were killed in an attack by unidentified gunmen in Kabul on Tuesday, police confirmed in a statement. The incident happened at around 09:20 am local time in Bagh-e-Daud area in Kabul’s PD5 after the gunmen opened fire on a vehicle carrying the employees, police said.

Police said an investigation has started into the incident. Security sources said that the employees worked for the rural rehabilitation and development directorate in Maidan Wardak province and that Reyaz Ahmad, the acting head of the department, is also among the victims. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack. Targeted attacks have recently increased in Kabul.

The US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) said in a report released on January 30 that the Taliban and Deash have increased targeted assassinations outside of Kabul and that the Taliban attacks in the Afghan capital are on the rise, with increasing targeted killings of government officials, civil society leaders and journalists.

“Five journalists were killed in the last two months of 2020, as well as a number of civil-society leaders,” the report says. The report says that violence trends high levels of insurgent and extremist violence continued in Afghanistan this quarter despite renewed calls from US officials for all sides to reduce violence in an effort to advance the ongoing peace process between the Taliban and the Afghan government.

Resolute Support, the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan, reported 2,586 civilian casualties from October 1 to December 31 last year, including 810 killed and 1,776 wounded, according to SIGAR report. The report says the proportion of casualties caused by IED increased by nearly 17 percent in this quarter, correlating with an increase in magnetically attached IEDs or “sticky bomb” attacks, the report said.