KABUL, Afghanistan — A senior Taliban official was fatally shot by two gunmen in the northwestern Afghan province of Badakhshan on Tuesday, marking one of the rare targeted killings of a high-ranking Taliban figure in the country.
The victim, Zabihullah Amiri, served as Badakhshan’s director of information and culture. He was shot while traveling from a local district toward the provincial capital of Faizabad, according to a statement released by the Information Ministry.
Security personnel responded quickly after the shooting. “Immediately following the incident, security guards opened fire on the attackers; one attacker was killed and the second was captured,” the ministry stated, noting that an investigation into the killing is underway.
Such targeted attacks on high-level Taliban figures have been uncommon since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in 2021, following the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces from the country.
In December 2024, Afghanistan’s refugee minister, Khalil Haqqani, was killed in a suicide bombing in the capital city of Kabul. Haqqani was the uncle of Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani, who commands a powerful faction within the Taliban organization.
In June 2023, a car bomb detonated in Faizabad claimed the life of Badakhshan’s deputy governor, Nisar Ahmad Ahmadi, along with his driver. A regional branch of the Islamic State group — known as the Islamic State in Khorasan Province — took credit for that attack, as well as a subsequent suicide bombing at a memorial service for the deputy governor that left at least 13 people dead.
Earlier, in March 2023, the governor of the northern province of Balkh lost his life when a bomb exploded at the governor’s office.
