Insurgents killed a senior adviser to President Hamid Karzai at his Kabul home on Sunday night, the second assassination in a week of an influential official from southern Afghanistan and a major setback to the government's power there.
Jan Mohammed Khan, the former governor of southern Uruzgan province, was killed when at least two insurgents burst into his home at about 8 p.m., police officials said. Fighting continued for three hours after the attack as police battled insurgents holed up inside the residence.
The Taliban took responsibility for the attack, which also killed Mohammed Hashem Watanwal, a parliamentarian from Uruzgan who was visiting Mr. Khan at the time.
"He was on the Taliban target list," the insurgents said in an emailed statement. "The Taliban of Uruzgan kept following him and finally the operation was successful today."
Mr. Khan was a key player in the push to open peace negotiations with the Taliban. His death, Afghan and Western officials said, is likely a sign from insurgents that they aren't interested in talks with the government.
Mr. Khan was a close ally to the Karzai family and a key strongman in southern Afghanistan. His death followed last week's assassination of Ahmed Wali Karzai, the president's half brother. Considered the most influential power broker in the south, Ahmed Wali Karzai was the provincial council chief for Kandahar, the homeland of the Taliban.
In a sign of how close he was to the Karzai family, Mr. Khan last week put his turban on the head of Ahmed Wali's successor as head of the Popolzai tribe, said Shah Wali Karzai, the president's brother and a friend of Mr. Khan's. A Taliban bombing of a mourning ceremony afterward killed Kandahar's top Islamic cleric.
"Who is next? What kind of message are the Taliban sending here?" said a Western diplomat.
With the deaths of Messrs. Khan and Karzai, the Afghan government and U.S. forces will have a harder time navigating the complicated Pashtun tribal structure in the south. Both men were veterans of the region's tribal politics.
Southern Afghanistan is a key battleground for U.S.-led international forces; most of the 30,000 U.S. surge forces were deployed in the region.
Eyewitnesses said they heard a small explosion at the beginning of Sunday's Kabul assault and then bursts of gunfire. Around 50 Afghan police and intelligence officers surrounded Mr. Khan's compound. An unknown number of Mr. Khan's bodyguards were also killed in the attack.
Mr. Khan's house was thrown into darkness Sunday night, as police cut off the electricity to flush out the remaining insurgents. But occasionally, the silence was broken by gunfire and shouting from inside the compound, witnesses said.
Mr. Khan's death is also a blow to the transition to Afghan security control, which officially started on Sunday in a handful of relatively secure areas.
The handover from the U.S.-led coalition to Afghan security forces is supposed to allow the bulk of international troops to withdraw by late 2014. But the coalition relies on strongmen like Mr. Khan and Ahmed Wali Karzai to gather support for the Afghan government among the tribes.
In 2006, President Karzai forced Mr. Khan from his position as Uruzgan's governor, a condition set by Dutch forces when they took over the province. The Dutch saw Mr. Khan as corrupt and an impediment to efforts to improve governance in the province.
The Netherlands has since withdrawn its forces from Uruzgan.
Mr. Khan and his family have built an empire of private security firms that work with coalition forces in the south. Mr. Khan helped found Asia Security Group, which he has since sold to Hashmat Karzai, a cousin of the president.
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