Taliban Kill Top Afghan Woman

Suspected Taliban gunmen shot dead a leading women's rights campaigner in Kandahar yesterday in the latest assassination of a government official in the restive southern provinces.

Women's Affairs director, Safia Ama Jan, was killed on the city outskirts as she left for work yesterday morning. The assailants shot her four times in the head, through a burka, before fleeing.

Ms Ama Jan, 56, has been an advocate for women's rights in Kandahar, the former Taliban headquarters, since the fundamentalists were ousted five years ago. Her murder appeared to mark a return to a strategy of intimidation and assassination after the defeat of Taliban fighters at the hands of a Nato force in western Kandahar this month.

Relatives described Ms Ama Jan as religious and a champion of women's education for more than three decades. She stayed in Afghanistan under the Taliban to give secret classes to local girls at home.