An 18-year-old woman working for the Afghan govt was killed in Kandahar on Tuesday, hours after suicide bombers targeted a nearby NATO fuel depot, killing four security guards. Rabia Sadat, who worked on rural development, was shot dead as she left home in the southern city of Kandahar to go to work at around 8:00 am (0330 GMT), provincial spokesman Zalmai Ayoubi said.
She had been assigned to a Western-funded project which aims to boost the quality of life in Afghanistan’s deprived villages by improving irrigation and the provision of drinking water. The Taliban did not immediately claim responsibility for the attack. But they frequently target government employees in a 10-year insurgency against US-led foreign forces and President Hamid Karzai’s Western-backed government.
Kandahar is the largest city in southern Afghanistan, the Taliban’s birthplace and the traditional heart of the insurgency. In recent weeks, the city’s mayor and Karzai’s powerful brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, have both been assassinated in Kandahar. The attacks have raised fears about a power vacuum in the south as NATO troops start withdrawing from Afghanistan under a tight timetable set to repatriate all foreign combat troops by the end of 2014.
