Gunmen kill high-ranking Taliban official in Afghanistan in rare targeted attack

Gunmen have killed a high-ranking local Taliban official in Afghanistan's Badakhshan provinceByABDUL QAHAR AFGHAN Associated PressKABUL, Afghanistan -- Gunmen killed a high-ranking local Taliban official in Afghanistan’s northwestern province of Badakhshan on Tuesday in a rare targeted killing in the country.Two gunmen shot Zabihullah Amiri, Badakhshan’s director of information and culture, as he headed from a local district to the provincial capital Faizabad, the Information Ministry said in a statement.“Immediately following the incident, security guards opened fire on the attackers; one attacker was killed and the second was captured,” the ministry said, adding that authorities were investigating the killing.Targeted killings of high-ranking Taliban officials have been rare since the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in 2021 in the wake of the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces. In December 2024, the country’s refugee minister, Khalil Haqqani, was killed in a suicide bombing in the capital Kabul. Haqqani was the uncle of Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani, who leads a powerful network within the Taliban.In June 2023, a car bomb in Faizabad killed Badakhshan’s deputy governor, Nis...