Top Afghan woman cop killed

2008-09-28 18:21

Kandahar - Taliban gunmen shot dead the most high-profile female police officer in Afghanistan and wounded her teenage son as she left home to go to work on Sunday, officials and the militia said.

Attackers waiting outside the home of Malalai Kakar, head of the city of Kandahar's department of crimes against women, opened fire on her car as she left, Kandahar government spokesperson Zalmay Ayoobi told AFP.

"Today (Sunday) between 07:00 and 08:00 when she was (in her car) outside her house and going to her job, some gunmen attacked," Ayoobi said.

"Malalai Kakar died in front of her house. Her son was wounded."

A doctor in the city's main hospital said Kakar, in her late 40s, had been shot in the head.

"She died on the spot and her son was badly injured and is in a coma," he said on condition of anonymity.

Her son, aged 15, had been driving Kakar to work, police said. The boy later came out of the coma, but was in a serious condition.

A spokesperson for the Taliban, which targets government officials as part of a growing deadly insurgency, said that the assassins were from his group.

'Act of cowardice'

"We killed Malalai Kakar," spokesperson Yousuf Ahmadi told AFP. "She was our target, and we successfully eliminated our target."

President Hamid Karzai condemned the attack, saying in a statement that it was an "act of cowardice" by the "enemies of the peace and welfare and reconstruction of Afghanistan".

The European Mission branch in Afghanistan said Kakar had been an "example" in her country and her murder was "particularly abhorrent".

Kakar, a mother of six, was regularly profiled in international media and was known for her courage in one of Afghanistan's most conservative provinces.

About 750 policemen have been killed in the past six months, mostly in insurgency-linked violence sweeping the country.

- AFP