Afghan president’s advisor survives attack

KABUL - A senior Afghan official Wednesday survived an attack in southern Afghanistan, but another explosion in the region killed five private security guards, officials said.

Jan Mohammad Khan, President Hamid Karzai’s advisor on tribal affairs, was en route to a local council in Uruzgan province when a roadside bomb was remotely detonated, Juma Gul Hemat, the provincial police chief, said.

Khan, who served for several years as provincial governor for Uruzgan, survived the attack, but a child and police officer were injured and one of the vehicles in the convoy was damaged, he said.

The explosives were loaded on a motorbike, which was left at the roadside in Deh Rawood district, he said.

No group took responsibility for the attack. The bombing, however, bore the hallmarks of Taliban militants, who rely heavily on use of roadside attacks as part of their nearly nine-year-insurgency.

The attack came three days after another of Karzai’s advisors, Waheedullah Sabawoon, was injured along with seven other people in a roadside bomb in the eastern province of Nangarhar.

Five private security guards were killed Tuesday in a roadside bomb in Arghandab, a district in the southern province of Zabul, said Mohammad Jan Rasoulyar, a spokesman for the provincial governor.

Four other guards, who were providing security for a road construction company, were injured in the blast, he said.

Taliban attacks have claimed the lives of more than 1,100 Afghan civilians and injured more than 1,300 others since beginning of the year, according to the interior ministry.