ISLAMABAD – Taliban fighters on Saturday attacked a convoy carryingAfghanistan’s vice president Abdul Rashid Dostum, in an assault that leftthe former warlord unscathed but killed one of his bodyguards, an officialtold AFP.
Enayatullah Babur, Dostum’s former chief of staff, said the hour-longattack also left several others in the convoy wounded.
The attack occurred in the northern province of Balkh, where Dostum hadheld a rally earlier in the day.
On Twitter, a Taliban spokesman said the insurgent group had carried outthe attack and claimed four of Dostum’s bodyguards had been killed.
Dostum, a powerful ethnic Uzbek leader, is notorious in Afghanistan forextreme barbarities and for repeatedly switching loyalties over 40 years ofconflict.
Despite a catalogue of war crimes attached to his name and accusations oforganising the rape and torture of a political rival, Dostum becameAfghanistan’s first vice president in 2014.
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At the rally in Balkh, Dostum had claimed he could clear northernAfghanistan of the Taliban within six months — if only the governmentwould let him.
In delayed elections now slated for September, President Ashraf Ghani haschosen to run with Amrullah Saleh, an ethnic Tajik, instead of Dostum.
Dostum has survived several other attempts on his life, including oneclaimed by the Islamic State group last July in Kabul that killed 23 peopleincluding AFP driver Mohammad Akhtar. – APP/AFP
