Anti-Taliban Afghan tribal leader killed in mosque

[January 17, 2012]  KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Assailants gunned down a prominent anti-Taliban tribal leader as he praying in a mosque Tuesday in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, authorities said, in the latest in a steady campaign of assassinations of pro-government officials.

Armed insurgents entered the mosque Tuesday morning and shot Mohammad Nahim Agha Mama as he worshipped, the Kandahar provincial governor's office said in a statement. A Pashtun tribal leader and local council member of the province's Dand district, Nahim was well-known in the province for urging his followers not to join the Taliban.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but the Taliban have killed hundreds of Afghan government officials and pro-government tribal leaders in recent years as part of wave of assassinations seeking to weaken confidence President Hamid Karzai's administration. The campaign has also targeted senior figures, including former President Burhanuddin Rabbani who was killed in September by a suicide attacker with a bomb hidden in his turban.

The governor's office called Nahim's killing "an anti-Islamic and antihuman act," and said in a statement that he "was doing his best to bring peace and stability and that's why the enemies are killing those people."

In the country's northeast, at least 14 people died in avalanches fueled by heavy snow in the mountainous Badakhshan province, officials said Tuesday.

Rescue crews were trying to reach the remote areas of the province where a number of houses were reported to have been destroyed on Monday, said Shams ul-Rahman deputy provincial governor. About 6-9 feet (2-3 meters) of snow has made roads to the provincial capital of Faizabad impassable.

Avalanches present a constant danger in many parts of Afghanistan during the winter. In 2010, an avalanche killed at least 171 people near the 12,700-foot (3,800-meter) high Salang Pass, a major route through the Hindu Kush mountains that connects the Afghan capital of Kabul to the north of the country.

Also on Tuesday, Afghan President Hamid Karzai urged the Taliban to allow teams conducting a polio vaccination campaign access to areas under the insurgents' control.

"Whoever prevents the polio vaccination is the enemy of our children's future," Karzai said in a statement.

Afghanistan is one of just three nations where polio remains endemic. The two others are Nigeria and neighboring Pakistan.

Karzai said that although millions of Afghan children had been inoculated in successive campaigns, many remained outside the reach of health officials because of the security situation in areas in the south and along the border with Pakistan.

Last year, the government registered 80 new cases of polio, most of them in the restive southern provinces. That figure was three times higher than the total for 2010.

The polio virus, which usually infects children, attacks the central nervous system, sometimes causing paralysis, muscular atrophy, deformation and, in some cases, death.

[Associated Press; By RAHIM FAIEZ]

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