KABUL — A bomb blasted through a mosque in the capital of Takhar Province in northern Afghanistan, killing the governor of a neighboring province as he attended Friday Prayer and at least 12 other worshippers, said a spokesman for the provincial governor.
The slain official was Mohammed Omar, the governor of Kunduz, a Takhar native who returned there each week for the Muslim weekend and Friday worship. Mr. Omar — who had survived one other assassination attempt — was believed to have been the target of the attack, said Faiz Mohammad Tawhidi, the spokesman for the Takhar governor.
While Kunduz has been troubled for months and Mr. Omar was outspoken about his province’s problems, neighboring Takhar, which has only a small Pashtun population, until recently had been mostly peaceful.
However, during the parliamentary election campaign, NATO troops targeted extremist leaders from Uzbekistan who were traveling in Takhar and killed at least 10 people, according to local reports. NATO officials said they were targeting a leader from the Uzbek Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and several of his aides.
The Kunduz governor was a prominent commander during Afghanistan’s civil war from 1992-1996 and a member of the conservative United Islamic Party headed by Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, who is now a leading conservative figure in the Afghan Parliament. After President Hamid Karzai came to power, Mr. Omar served briefly as governor of Baghlan Province and was then transferred to Kunduz where he had served for the past seven years.
A year ago, Mr. Omar survived another assassination attempt when a roadside bomb exploded as he traveled between Kunduz and Takhar. Mr. Omar had long predicted that he would be assassinated and openly accused the Pakistani Intelligence Service of being involved in the insurgency and said that they would target him.
He also had not hesitated to speak out against the Taliban, although most are Pashtuns as he was. On Oct. 2 he gave an interview to the Afghan Tolo television channel in which he said that the 40 percent of Kunduz Province was under Taliban control and that Al Qaedaand other insurgent groups had a presence there. He urged the central government in Kabul to increase the number of troops there, saying, “I am really concerned about security of Kunduz Province ,” and he named three large districts which he said the insurgents were using as a base to plan attacks.
Kunduz is one of several provinces where there is no cell phone service from dusk until dawn because the insurgents force the cell phone companies to turn off the signal towers at night.
Mr. Omar’s brother, Noor Khan, was killed in a Taliban attack last year when he was serving as the local police chief in a troubled district of the province.
Sharifullah Sahak contributed reporting from Kabul and an Afghan employee of The New York Times contributed from Kunduz.
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