Top Karzai Aide Gunned Down

Gunmen hit the Kabul home of one of Hamid Karzai’s top aides today, killing him and an Afghan lawmaker, local police tell Reuters. “The battle between gunmen and security forces is still going on,” the spokesman said. According to an AFP reporter on the scene, two or three gunmen are battling dozens of security forces and power has been cut off to the house.

The aide was Jan Mohammad Khan, who was once the governor of Uruzgan province in Afghanistan’s volatile south. His nephew still controls a 3,000-strong militia there. “He was very close to Karzai. He was as important as AWK,” a government official said, referring to the president’s brother Ahmed Wali Karzai, who was killed on Tuesday. Today also marks the day international forces begin handing over territory to Afghan security forces, starting with the peaceful province of Bamiyan in the central part of the country, the AP reports. (More Hamid Karzai stories.)