A suicide bomber killed six Afghans, including a district police chief, in an attack at a mosque in the eastern province of Kunar, a known haven for the Taliban and al Qaeda.
The suicide bomber detonated his explosive-packed vest as worshippers were leaving the mosque in the district of Ghaziabad.
"The attacker detonated his explosives in the mosque, killing the district police chief, an intelligence officer, two police and two civilians," Kunar's governor told AFP.
The attack is the second suicide bombing at a mosque in Afghanistan this week. On Dec. 6, a suicide bomber killed 54 Afghans at a mosque in Kabul. The Afghans were Shia who were celebrating Ashura. The Lashkar-e-Jhangvi al Almi, a Pakistan-based terror group allied with the Taliban and al Qaeda, claimed responsibility for the attack.
The Taliban have carried out numerous attacks at mosques in the past, including the assassination of Kunduz's governor in the province of Takhar on Oct. 8, 2010, and more recently, a suicide bombing that killed seven people, including a local police commander, in an attack at a mosque in the northern Afghan province of Baghlan on Nov. 6.
Today's suicide attack in Kunar took place just two days after the International Security Assistance Force killed Ahmed Shah, a "senior Taliban member" in the province who planned suicide attacks. Shah was killed in the Pech district in a "precision air strike," ISAF stated in a press release.
"Ahmed Shah was well-known in the Pech district for planning suicide operations in the Manogai area of the district. He used car bombs and multiple suicide bombers to carry out attacks," ISAF stated.
ISAF said Shah "planned attacks against Afghan government officials and security forces " and "recently constructed a plan to increase attacks in Pech district, and provided a safe haven for 40 insurgent fighters."
Kunar is an al Qaeda safe haven
Kunar province is a known safe haven for al Qaeda and allied terror groups such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba. The presence of al Qaeda cells has been detected in the districts of Pech, Shaikal Shate, Sarkani, Dangam, Asmar, Asadabad, Shigal, and Marawana; or eight of Kunar's 15 districts, according to an investigation by The Long War Journal.
Since September 2010, ISAF has killed or captured six top al Qaeda commanders and operatives in Kunar.
On April 14, an ISAF airstrike killed Abu Hafs al Najdi, al Qaeda's operations chief for Kunar province, who was responsible for "establishing insurgent camps and training sites" throughout the province. Also killed in the airstrike was Waqas, a senior al Qaeda operative who was from Pakistan, along with an unspecified number of other operatives.
Prior to the killing of Najdi and Waqas in April of this year in Kunar, special operations forces captured Abu Ikhlas al Masri, the previous operations chief for Kunar, in December 2010. [For more information, see LWJ report, ISAF captures al Qaeda's top Kunar commander.]
A few months earlier, in October 2010, US aircraft killed three senior al Qaeda operatives in an airstrike on a compound in the Korengal Valley. Among those killed in the strike was a Saudi named Abdallah Umar al Qurayshi, who was a senior al Qaeda commander who coordinated the attacks of a group of Arab fighters in Kunar and Nuristan provinces and also maintained extensive contacts with al Qaeda facilitators throughout the Middle East. Qurayshi has also been described as al Qaeda's third in command in Afghanistan. The two operatives also confirmed killed in the strike were Abu Atta al Kuwaiti, an explosives expert; and Sa'ad Mohammad al Shahri, a longtime jihadist and the son of a retired Saudi colonel. Shahri, like Najdi, was on a Saudi most-wanted list.
ISAF has also been actively hunting another top al Qaeda commander, Qari Zia Rahman, since the summer of 2010. Rahman has been described as a "dual hatted al Qaeda and Taliban commander," and leads forces in Kunar and Nuristan provinces in Afghanistan as well as across the border in Pakistan's tribal agencies of Bajaur and Mohmand.