Suicide bomber kills Afghan peace envoy

ASADABAD: A suicide bomber assassinated an Afghan peace envoy and former mujahedeen commander on Friday, along with his son in an eastern region close to the Pakistan border, officials said.

Maulavi Mohammad Hashem Munib, the head of the High Peace Council in Kunar province, was the target, said provincial police chief Ewaz Mohammad Nazari.

"He was on his way home from Friday prayers when he was attacked by a suicide attacker," he told.

One witness said that both Munib and the attacker had been torn to pieces, with body parts littering the scene.

The national head of the High Peace Council, former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani, was assassinated last year by a purported Taliban envoy who hid a bomb in his turban.

Rabbani's killing -- Afghanistan's most high-profile political assassination since a US-led invasion ousted the Taliban after the September 11, 2001 attacks -- was a major setback to Karzai's hopes of securing a deal with the militants.

As well as trying to negotiate with insurgents, the High Peace Council runs efforts to reconcile them with offers of money and jobs.

Munib was himself a former senior commander of Hezb-i Islami, one of the major Afghan mujahedeen groups that fought Soviet troops in the 1980s. (AFP)