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KANDAHAR, (Afghanistan), Oct 19: Suspected Taliban insurgents shot dead a district chief in a mosque in Afghanistan's troubled south, a governor said Wednesday, in the fourth killing linked to religion in less than a week,report agencies.
Haji Ahmadullah Khan was shot dead in a mosque in his home village in insurgency-hit Kandahar province's Panjwayi district late Tuesday while saying his evening Ramadan prayers, provincial governor Assadullah Khalid told AFP.
Khan had been home from Arghandab district, where he is district chief, for the Ramadan holidays.
"Khan was shot dead in the mosque by armed Taliban as he was busy praying," Khalid said.
No one else was hurt and there had been no arrests, Kandahar police said.
Three pro-government religious leaders have been also been killed in the country in the past few days, all of them members of provincial religious councils that advise the government.
One of the mullahs, Mawlawi Noor Ahmad Jan from eastern Kunar province, had been an outspoken critic of the Taliban. He was killed by intruders who broke into his home late Sunday.
Taliban militants claimed responsibility for the killing of another, Mawlawi Mohammad Gul from southern Helmand province. He was also shot dead on Sunday, while walking home from evening Ramadan prayers.
A bomb exploded in a mosque in the eastern province of Khost on Friday, killing cleric Mohammad Khan while he was delivering a sermon and wounding a dozen worshippers.
The fundamentalist Taliban -- who were toppled for not handing over Osama bin Laden, alleged mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks on US cities -- have vowed to overthrow the government of President Hamid Karzai.
Nearly 1,400 people, many of them militants, have been killed this year in violence mostly blamed on the Taliban insurgency.
Meanwhile: Unknown gunmen kidnapped and killed a school principle and a janitor in separate attacks in insurgency-hit southern Afghanistan, an education official said Wednesday.
The official did not say who was responsible for the murders in Kandahar province on Tuesday, but an interior ministry spokesman blamed "the enemies peace and stability", a term often used to refer to Taliban militants.
Principle Abdul Ali was snatched from the Khandigak school in Panjwayee district and later found dead, provincial education department head Hayatullah Rafiqi said.
The janitor was killed on the same day at a school in Dand district of the same province, he said.
Kandahar has been badly hit by a wave violence blamed on a guerrilla-like insurgency against the US-backed government of President Hamid Karzai that the Taliban launched after being ousted in late 2001.
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