2 rights group staffers killed in Afghanistan bombing

KABUL, Afghanistan

Two officials of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) were killed in a blast in the capital Kabul on Saturday, officials confirmed.

In a statement, the group said Fatima Khalil, a donor liaison officer, and Ahmad Jawed Folad, a driver, were in an AIHRC shuttle that was targeted with an improvised explosive device near Butkhak Square in Kabul’s District 12.

Khalil, 24, started working with the AIHRC in September last year, after graduating from the American University of Central Asia in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan.

Folad, aged 41, was one of the commission’s longest-serving employees, working there since June 2003.

He is survived by his wife and three children, according to the statement.

“This forms a pattern of attacks on a constitutionally mandated national human rights institution that is unparalleled. It is intolerable. In the context of armed conflict, deliberately killing human rights defenders is a war crime,” the AIHRC said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, which has drawn widespread condemnation from the Afghan government and international community.

The attack was the latest in a string of targeted killings of pro-government religious scholars and rights defenders since mid-May, when the Taliban and Afghan security forces reached an undeclared cease-fire that still remains in force.