An Afghan women’s affairs official was killed Friday when a bomb attached to her vehicle exploded, critically wounding her husband and daughter, police said. “Laghman provincial women’s affairs director Hanifa Safi was assassinated as a result of the explosion of a magnetic bomb attached to her vehicle,” provincial police chief Abdul Rahman Sarjang told AFP. “Her daughter and husband along with four passersby were wounded.” Safi and Laghman provincial government spokesman Sarhadi Zwak blamed Taliban insurgents for the attack. The killing came just days after a shocking video surfaced of the execution of a woman, allegedly by Taliban Islamists, after she was accused of adultery in Parwan just north of Kabul. The Taliban, who were notorious for their suppression of women’s rights during their rule from 1996 to 2001, are waging an insurgency to overthrow the Western-backed government of President Hamid Karzai. Their favoured weapons — indiscriminate roadside bombs — are responsible for a majority of the deaths of both security forces and civilians, but the use of a magnetic bomb indicates that Safi was a specific target.
