KABUL — A provincial judge from a restive eastern province was assassinated Sunday, Afghan officials said. The judge’s 8-year-old daughter was killed with him, they said.
For the past several years, the Taliban and affiliated insurgent groups have carried out a concerted campaign of assassinations, taking aim at influential local figures — tribal elders, community leaders, municipal and provincial officials — because of perceived loyalty to the central government.
Such targeted killings account for a growing proportion of overall civilian deaths in the war in Afghanistan, the United Nations said in a recent report.
The victim of the latest shooting was Mohammad Nasir, who led the appeals court in Kunar province, which lies near Pakistan’s tribal areas and has been the scene of heavy fighting over the past year. The killing occurred as the judge was visiting family in neighboring Nangarhar province.
Ahmad Zia Abdulzai, a provincial spokesman in Nangarhar, said Nasir was ambushed in his vehicle on his way home and that the shooting injured two women and five children, all believed to be relatives. Other news accounts said the killing had taken place in the home of a family member in Nangarhar.
The killing occurred in a district near Jalalabad, the main city in Afghanistan’s east, which was recently handed over to Afghan security control.
