ID :
208466
Wed, 09/21/2011 - 07:24
Auther :

Ex-Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani killed

TEHRAN,Sept.21(MNA)--Former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani, who was appointed last year to head a commission trying to broker a peace deal with the Taliban, was martyred inside his Kabul home on Tuesday afternoon in a suicide bombing.

“Rabbani has been martyred,” Mohammed Zahir, head of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Kabul Police, told Reuters.

A senior security official, an official of the High Peace Council and a person close to Rabbani confirmed that he was martyred in the explosion. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said they were trying to learn more details. Rabbani’s house is near the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.

Iranian Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani offered condolences to the Afghan nation over the martyrdom of Rabbani on Tuesday.

MP Alaeddin Boroujerdi, the chairman of the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, said the assassins killed Rabbani in order to fan the flames of tribal conflict in Afghanistan.

Rabbani had attended the 1st International Islamic Awakening Conference, which was held in Tehran from September 17 to 18.

The Press TV correspondent in Kabul said that two men who claimed that they wanted to negotiate with Rabbani carried out the attack.

The Taliban has claimed responsibility for the attack, he added.

Five other people, all senior Afghan officials, were also killed in the incident. The head of the joint secretariat of the High Council for Peace, Massum Stanikzai, was injured in the attack.

As chairman of the Afghanistan peace council, Rabbani was in charge of talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban with the goal of reintegrating militants willing to lay down their arms.

The initiative to form a peace council was adopted at a traditional gathering, or Jirga, in June 2010 due to the failure of US-led forces to establish peace in Afghanistan.

Rabbani, who served as president from 1992 to 1996, left Kabul when the Taliban seized control of the country. He was one of the key leaders of the Northern Alliance, a coalition of veteran fighters and political factions that fought against the Taliban. Rabbani was about 80 years old and was an ethnic Tajik.



X