Afghanistan bomb kills Faizabad mayor, sources say

A bomb attack killed Habib-ur-Rahman Mansour, mayor of Faizabad in Afghanistan's Badakhshan province, on Thursday, hospital and municipal workers told AFP.

A nurse at Badakhshan provincial hospital said Mansour was killed after a bomb targeted his vehicle. A Faizabad municipality employee said the bomb had been planted near the workplace. Both requested anonymity.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

The killing came less than three weeks after Zabihullah Amiri, head of the information and culture department in Badakhshan, was shot dead while travelling to Faizabad. Islamic State-Khorasan, the Afghanistan and Pakistan branch of Islamic State, said it carried out that attack.

Badakhshan has become an important mining hub under Taliban authorities, which have expanded the sector since returning to power five years ago. Clashes in the province in May during efforts by security forces to destroy opium poppy fields killed two people, including a teenager.

Taliban officials have said they will restore security in Afghanistan, but sporadic attacks have continued since 2021. Islamic State-Khorasan has claimed some of them, including a January explosion at a Chinese restaurant in central Kabul that killed at least seven people and a December 2024 suicide bombing in Kabul that killed refugees minister Khalil Ur-Rahman Haqqani.