Gunmen shot dead a top Afghan peace negotiator in the capital Kabul today.
Maulvi Arsala Rahmani was one of the most senior members on Afghanistan's High Peace Council, set up by President Hamid Karzai two years ago to open talks with insurgents. His death is a major blow to the country's attempts to negotiate a peace deal with Taliban.
"He [Rahmani] was stuck in heavy traffic when another car beside him opened fire," said Gen Mohammad Zahir, head of the investigations unit for Kabul police.
Mr Rahmani, a former Taliban minister, was on his way to a meeting with lawmakers and other officials in a government-run media centre in the heavily barricaded diplomatic centre of Kabul.
"His driver did not immediately realise that Rahmani had been killed," a police official said, adding no one had been arrested in connection with the shooting.
The head of the peace council and former Afghan president, Burhanuddin Rabbani, was assassinated by a suicide bomber last year.
Elsewhere, two members of the Afghan police opened fire on British soldiers who were mentoring them in the south of the country, killing two, Britain's Defence Ministry said today.
British defence secretary Philip Hammond told the BBC one of the gunmen had been killed and the other had escaped.
The shooting yesterday in Lashkar Gah in southern Helmand province was the latest in a string of attacks by members of Afghanistan's security services on foreign troops and their mentors, increasing pressure on some Nato countries to withdraw.
Reuters