{"id":38114,"date":"2019-03-30T20:23:14","date_gmt":"2019-03-30T20:23:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=38114"},"modified":"2019-03-30T20:23:14","modified_gmt":"2019-03-30T20:23:14","slug":"afghan-vice-president-narrowly-escapes-taliban-attack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=38114","title":{"rendered":"Afghan vice president narrowly escapes Taliban attack"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Afghanistan’s Vice President\u00a0<\/span>Abdul Rashid Dostum has escaped unhurt from a Taliban attack that killed one of his bodyguards, according to officials.<\/p>\n

Attackers ambushed Dostum’s convoy on Saturday on the way from Mazar-i-Sharif, a city in Balkh province, to Jawzjan province in northern Afghanistan<\/a>, said Bashir Ahmad Tayenj, a spokesman for Dostum’s Junbish Party.<\/p>\n

Dostum was aware of a planned attack but decided to travel anyway, the spokesman added.<\/p>\n

Two other of Dostum’s bodyguards were wounded.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dostum had held a rally in Balkh earlier in the day as he had joined the election team of Afghan Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, one of several contenders in a presidential election scheduled for September 28.<\/p>\n

The Taliban<\/a> claimed responsibility for the assassination attempt. In a tweet, Zabihullah Mujahid, the group’s spokesman,\u00a0<\/span>said four guards were killed and six wounded in the attack.<\/p>\n

Second attempt<\/h2>\n

The assault came eight months after Dostum avoided injury in a suicide bombing at Kabul airport<\/span>\u00a0that killed 23 people.<\/p>\n

That attack, which was claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL<\/a> or ISIS), took place as Dostum returned home from more than a year in exile in Turkey over allegations of torturing and abusing a political rival.<\/p>\n

Dostum had left Afghanistan after heavy pressure from Western donors, including the United States.<\/p>\n

Less than a year since his return, he remains a significant, if polarising, political figure.<\/p>\n

A powerful ethnic Uzbek leader, Dostum is notorious in Afghanistan for extreme barbarities and for repeatedly switching loyalties over 40 years of conflict.<\/p>\n

Despite a catalogue of war crimes attached to his name and accusations of organising the rape and torture of a political rival, Dostum became Afghanistan’s first vice president in 2014.<\/p>\n

At the rally in Balkh, Dostum had claimed he could clear northern Afghanistan of the Taliban within six months – if only the government would let him.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Afghanistan’s Vice President\u00a0Abdul Rashid Dostum has escaped unhurt from a Taliban attack that killed one of his bodyguards, according to officials. Attackers ambushed Dostum’s convoy on Saturday on the way from Mazar-i-Sharif, a city in Balkh province, to Jawzjan province in northern Afghanistan, said Bashir Ahmad Tayenj, a spokesman for Dostum’s Junbish Party. Dostum was…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":38115,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38114\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}