Afghan MP killed by suicide bomber at daughter's wedding

Ahmad Khan Samangani, who was killed after apparently telling staff to keep security checks on guests to a minimum. Photograph: Reuters

An influential Afghan MP and more than a dozen of his guests at a family wedding have been killed after a suicide bomber infiltrated the party in the north of the war-torn country, the third assassination of a senior official in two days.

Ahmad Khan Samangani, an ethnic Uzbek MP, was attending the wedding of his daughter and his nephew in Aybak, the capital of the northern province of Samangan, when the blast happened.

The MP, who survived an attempt on his life five years ago, rose to prominence during the fight against Soviet forces and then the country's bitter civil war. After the fall of the Taliban, he moved into government as an MP in 2005.

"This morning at 7.30 Ahmad Khan Samangani was at a wedding ceremony for his daughter and his nephew," said Khalilluah Andarabi, provincial police chief in Samangan.

When the bomber struck, most of the guests had already arrived at the wedding hall for an event that can be held very early in northern Afghanistan. Samangani was at the door welcoming a group of guests and elders from the regional hub, Mazar-e-Sharif city, Andarabi said.

The provincial head of the intelligence service was also among the 15 dead, said the deputy provincial governor, Ghulam Sakhi. Around 60 others were wounded, including senior police and army commanders, and the death toll was likely to rise, he warned.

"I visited the wounded in hospital, the situation of some of them was very bad," he told the Guardian by phone, adding that the toll had been so high partly because "the killer was walking among the guests". The bride and groom survived.

Samangani may have helped seal his own fate by ordering only basic security checks as a mark of respect to his 5,000 guests. "He told the wedding hall staff and his relatives: 'Don't try to check the people too seriously, I don't want my guests to be disturbed,'" Sakhi said.

The killing came the day after a provincial governor of women's affairs was killed by a bomb attached to her car in eastern Afghanistan, and the mayor of Shindand district in western Afghanistan was shot dead by unknown gunmen as he left a mosque.

The Taliban denied any role in the Samangan bombing. "We don't have a hand in this issue," a spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, told the Reuters news agency.

"Ahmad Khan [Samangani] was a former commander of the mujahideen. He was notorious and many people could have had problems with him."

A man like Samangani almost certainly would have created many enemies over the years, and Afghanistan is awash in weapons and has serious problems with criminal violence.

But suicide bombers are used by insurgent, not criminal, groups and the Taliban has repeatedly said it considers politicians and other government officials legitimate targets. They might also be reluctant to claim a brutal attack on a wedding party, because it violates instructions from the group's leadership to avoid civilian casualties.

Samangani's killing follows the assassination in recent years of a string of key commanders from the north who once helped lead resistance to the Taliban and might have been candidates to do so again were civil war to return.

Among the targets have been the northern police chief General Daud Daud, the governor of Kunduz province Mohammad Omar, and the deputy chief of the intelligence service Abdullah Laghmani.

? Additional reporting by Mokhtar Amiri

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/14/afghan-mp-suicide-bomber-wedding

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