Bomber kills Afghan peace envoy

A suicide bomber assassinated an Afghan peace envoy and his son on April 6 in an eastern part of the country bordering Pakistan, officials said. 

Maulavi Mohammad Hashem Munib, the head of the High Peace Council in Kunar province, was the target, said provincial police chief Ewaz Mohammad Nazari. “He was on his way home from Friday prayers when he was attacked by a suicide attacker,” he told Agence France-Presse. Kunar, which borders Pakistan, is a stronghold of the Taliban-led insurgency against President Hamid Karzai’s goverment and its Western allies. The national head of the High Peace Council, former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani, was assassinated last year by a purported Taliban envoy who hid a bomb in his turban.

Also, seven people were burnt to death in southern Afghanistan on April 6 when a fuel tanker supplying a NATO base crashed and set their vehicle on fire, officials said. The security chief of Panjwayi district and the Kandahar police chief said there was no insurgent activity at the time, and residents later pulled back from claims that the Taliban had attacked with rocket grenades.