A suicide bomber killed the chief of Afghanistan's peace council in the Taliban haven of Kunar province. The attack is the latest to target government officials and security personnel throughout the country.
Maulavi Mohammad Hashem Munib, the head of the High Peace Council in Kunar province, and his son were killed in an attack in the Watapur district earlier today as they traveled home from a local mosque, according to Pajwhok Afghan News. The Watapur Valley has been the scene of major clashes between US and insurgent forces over the past several years.
The Taliban have not released a statement claiming credit for the attack.
The Afghan High Peace Council is tasked with facilitating reconciliation between the government and Afghan insurgent groups such at the Taliban, Hizb-i-Islam Gulbuddin, and the Haqqani Network.
The Taliban have spurned the efforts of the High Peace Council, and assassinated the national leader and former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani in a suicide attack in September 2011.
Today's suicide attack is the latest in a series of killings by the Taliban that have targeted security forces and government officials nationwide. Also today, the Taliban killed four policemen in three separate attacks in Helmand province.
Yesterday a Taliban suicide bomber killed Nazik Mir, an influential commander of the Afghan Local Police in Kisham district in Badakhshan. The same day, the Taliban killed eight members of the Afghan local police and captured two more in Faryab's Khaki Safed district.
On April 4, a Taliban suicide bomber killed 12 people, including three US soldiers and four Afghan policemen, in an attack in Mamiama, the provincial capital of Faryab.
On March 30, a member of the Afghan Local Police who is reportedly a Taliban infiltrator killed nine of his colleagues as they slept. He poisoned them first, then gunned them down and stole their weapons. And on March 26, a member of the ALP gunned down an ISAF soldier at a checkpoint in the east.