Taliban Claim Assassination of Karzai Brother

Ahmed Wali Karzai, the younger brother of the Afghan president and a deeply controversial power broker in the country's southern Taliban heartland, was assassinated at home on Tuesday.

The killing will present a huge loss for President Hamid Karzai in Kandahar, the heartland of the insurgency as NATO troops start withdrawing combat troops and search for a political solution after a decade of war.

Although the Taliban immediately claimed responsibility, Afghan intelligence officials said the Kandahar provincial council chief was killed by a guest.

A senior official with Afghanistan's spy agency told Agence France Presse that the killer was an old friend visiting him at home. He said the gunman was not searched on arrival because of his close friendship with Karzai.

Naming the assassin as "Sardar Mohammad", he said he was a village elder in Karzai's home village and was shot dead by bodyguards after the assassination.

"He was visiting Wali in his home. They were meeting alone in a room, and he gets his pistol and shoots him dead and other bodyguards rush to the room and kill Sardar," said the official speaking on condition of anonymity.

Describing Mohammad as in "his late 30s or early 40s", he added: "Wali knew him from a long time ago."

"We can confirm he has been martyred," Kandahar provincial government spokesman Zalmay Ayubi told AFP, providing no further details.

The assassination came just before the Afghan leader received French President Nicolas Sarkozy, on a surprise visit to Afghanistan where he announced that Paris would recall 1,000 soldiers by the end of next year.

Interior ministry spokesman Seddiq Seddiqi said: "One of the very important figures in Afghanistan has been martyred. We condemn this attack. We will provide further information later."

"He was shot dead at his house by one of the visiting guests not by a body guard, at around 11:30 am (07:00 GMT)," said an official at Afghanistan's intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security.

The official said the gunman had himself been killed by other bodyguards.

The family friend said a number of Wali Karzai's guests were also killed in the gunfire, but there was no immediate confirmation on who or how many.

Wali Karzai was for years a deeply controversial figure, dogged by allegations of unsavory links to Afghanistan's lucrative opium trade and private security firms.

American documents leaked by Internet whistleblower WikiLeaks late last year painted him as a corrupt drugs baron, lifting the lid on Western thoughts long kept private on the president's younger half brother's tainted record.

Kandahar is a make-or-break battleground in the U.S.-led fight to defeat the insurgency, where the United States has poured in thousands of extra troops to wrest the initiative from the Taliban and bolster the Afghan government.

Afghanistan is ranked one of the most corrupt countries in the world, where official graft undermines public support for the Western-backed government and is believed to help fuel support for the Taliban insurgency.

"The meeting with AWK highlights one of our major challenges in Afghanistan: how to fight corruption and connect the people to their government, when the key government officials are themselves corrupt," said a U.S. cable in 2009.

Karzai, who ran his own private militia in the province, is reported to have said the plethora of independent security firms run by different men in the region should be brought under the control of one man.