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Afghan authorities say unknown gunmen assassinated a senior Islamic official in Kabul on Saturday, while counter-insurgency operations elsewhere in the volatile country killed an American soldier and two Afghan soldiers.
A spokesman for the municipal police told VOA he found the body of Mawlawi Abdul Basir Haqqani, deputy chief of the religious council of Kabul, in the Chehelsutun district of the capital.
Basir Mujahid said the police had arrested a man suspected of having played a role in the incident and that an investigation was under way to determine the motive. Nobody immediately claimed responsibility for the deadly attack.
The assassination of Haqqani comes after the suicide bombing committed Tuesday in Kabul, which destroyed a large gathering of religious scholars and clerics, killing around 50 people. There was no claim of responsibility for this attack.
In addition, the NATO Resolute Support Mission announced that an American soldier was killed in action in Afghanistan on Saturday. The brief announcement promised more details later on the incident, including the identity of the deceased soldier.
The US military has lost eight staff members in action this year in the country. About 14,000 US soldiers are fighting terrorist groups and advising and training Afghan forces fighting the Taliban insurgency.
Two Afghan soldiers were killed and six others wounded when a military helicopter carrying reinforcements made an emergency landing Saturday in the Maruf district of southern Kandahar province.
While officials cited "a technical fault" for causing the incident, Taliban insurgents claimed to have shot down the army helicopter at Maruf, located near the Pakistani border.
Afghan security forces continue to suffer heavy losses while fighting the Taliban and other insurgent groups.
A suicide bomber blew himself up Friday in a mosque at an Afghan army base in the southeastern province of Khost, killing more than 27 people and injuring 50 others. The militant group of the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the bombing on Saturday.
In a rare revelation last week, President Ashraf Ghani revealed that Afghan security forces have lost nearly 29,000 people since 2015, when NATO transferred responsibility for national security to Kabul.
