KABUL – The head of Afghanistan’s High Peace Council, former President Burhanuddin Rabbani, who had been tasked with trying to negotiate a political end to the war, was killed at his home on Tuesday, a senior police officer said.
His residence is in Kabul’s heavily guarded diplomatic enclave, and the attack came just a week after a 20-hour siege at the edge of the area sometimes known as the “green zone”.
“Rabbani has been martyred,” Mohammed Zahir, head of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Kabul Police, told Reuters. He had no further details.
A police source said Masoom Stanekzai, a senior advisor to President Hamid Karzai, was badly injured in the attack.
“Masoom Stanekzai is alive but badly wounded,” the police source, who asked not to be named as he is not authorised to talk to the media, told Reuters.
Rabbani, a former leader of a powerful mujahideen party during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, was chosen by Karzai to head the High Peace Council last October.
His plan included offering amnesties and jobs to Taliban foot soldiers and asylum in third countries to leaders.
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