The mayor of Kandahar, the biggest city in southern Afghanistan and the birthplace of the Taliban movement, was killed in a suicide attack on Wednesday, police said.
The death comes two weeks after the assassination of Ahmed Wali Karzai, the so-called “King of Kandahar”, who was a key strongman in the region and an alleged drugs baron who was also half-brother to President Hamid Karzai.
Ghulam Haidar Hameedi died when a suicide bomber set off explosives hidden in his turban as the mayor spoke with citizens in the courtyard of the city hall, police General Abdul Raziq told AFP.
Kandahar — home to President Karzai’s family and scene of some of the war’s bloodiest fighting over the course of a decade — is a hotbed of tribal rivalries over local influence and money.
Hameedi was discussing a land dispute in which the mayor had ordered some houses to be destroyed as they were built illegally, participants at the meeting told AFP.
