KABUL (AP/TASS) – A car bombing in Afghanistan’s northeast on Tuesday killed a provincial deputy governor and his driver, a local official said.
Ten people were also wounded in the blast. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing in the city of Faizabad in Badakhshan province.
The deputy governor, Molvi Nisar Ahmad Ahmadi, was wounded in the explosion and died shortly after at a local hospital, according to Badakhshan’s cultural director Moazuddin Ahmadi.
A car bombing last December killed Badakhshan’s police chief as he was on his way to work.
The regional affiliate of the Daesh terrorist group — known as the Daesh in Khorasan Province — said at the time that it had carried out that attack. Daesh said it had parked an explosive-laden car on the road and detonated it when the police chief was close by.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Monday said that the U.S. provides strong support to the Daesh and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.
The minister made the remarks during a visit to a Russian military base in Tajikistan, according to a statement on the ministry’s website, TASS reported.
He first called attention to the statement of the U.S. Ambassador to Tajikistan Manuel Micaller that Washington does not support violent groups opposing the Taliban and calls on all sides in Afghanistan to engage in dialogue.
Then he said, “These are, in the language of diplomacy, false statements. It is well known that the U.S. actively supports Daesh militants remaining in Afghanistan and Al-Qaeda and other affiliated terrorist groups. The goal is simple. Just like they did in other cases in the Caucasus at the end of the last decade, the goal is not to allow Afghanistan to calm down. It is in the interests of the United States to have some destabilizing processes constantly taking place there.”
“It is not by chance that they do not give up the idea of returning their military infrastructure to the neighboring countries. As if to react to terrorist threats beyond the horizon,” the minister continued.
He also said that the West is always on the lookout for irritants in relations with Russia, and South Caucasus and Central Asia have recently taken center stage in these efforts.