Rabbani killed in suicide attack

Former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani, who as head of High Peace Council had been tasked with trying to negotiate a political end to the war, was killed in a suicide attack in Kabul, a private TV channel reported on Tuesday.
“Rabbani has been martyred,” said Mohammed Zahir, head of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Kabul Police. He had no further details. Rabbani’s home is inside the heavily guarded diplomatic enclave, and the attack came just a week after a 20-hour siege at the edge of the area sometimes known as the Green Zone.
Hashmatullah Stanikzai, spokesman for Kabul’s police chief, said it was probably a suicide attack. A senior Karzai adviser Masoom Stanekzai, who was also in the meeting was alive but badly wounded as they met with two members of the Taliban. Rabbani was formerly leader of a powerful mujahideen party during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s and served as president in the 1990s when mujahideen factions waged war for control of the country after the Soviet withdrawal.
Rabbani was president of the Afghan government that preceded the Taliban. After he was driven from Kabul in 1996, he became the nominal head of the Northern Alliance, mostly minority Tajiks and Uzbeks, who swept to power in Kabul after the Taliban’s fall. Rabbani is an ethnic Tajik. Rabbani is a well liked figure among the political echelons of Afghanistan, though the Taliban have a reserved approach towards him.
It is unclear whether the members of Taliban with whom they were meeting were the bombers. The assassination comes a week after a 20-hour gun and grenade attack that on Kabul’s diplomatic enclave by insurgents, and three suicide bomb attacks on other parts of the city — together the longest-lasting and most wide-ranging assault on the city.
Last week’s siege was the third major attack on the Afghan capital since June and included three suicide bombing in other parts of the city. At least five policemen and 11 civilians were killed. All three of those attacks are believed to be the work of the Haqqani network, a Taliban-allied insurgent faction.