- MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan
(Reuters) - A military commander belonging to the Afghan faction of ethnic
Uzbek warlord Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum and two of his bodyguards were killed
on Tuesday in an ambush in the trouble-plagued north.
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- Commander Shahi was driving to the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif
when his car was ambushed in the Char Bolak area about 18 miles to the
west, one of Dostum's deputies, General Majid Roozi, told Reuters.
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- The identity of Shahi's assailants was not known, but
Dostum's faction has a tense rivalry with the Jamiat-e-Islami group led
by ethnic Tajik Ustad Atta Mohammad.
-
- Shahi, who led about 300 fighters, served for more than
15 years as a commander for Dostum.
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- Although Dostum and Atta are both members of the central
government of President Hamid Karzai, their forces have clashed repeatedly
in the past year for control of territory in the north. Shahi's killing
came a week after bitter clashes between Atta and Dostum's fighters in
Maimana, the capital of Faryab province, in which 16 people, including
one of Atta's commanders and two civilians, were killed.
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- A temporary truce was enforced in Maimana after talks
involving officials of both factions and the United Nations, but reports
from the town on Tuesday said the situation remained tense and the two
factions were prepared for a possible resumption of fighting.
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- Factional rivalry like that in the north is seen as a
key threat to Karzai's government, which has struggled to assert itself
in the provinces since it replaced the fundamentalist Taliban regime in
late 2001.
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