A bomb attack killed the mayor of an Afghan provincial capital on Thursday, hospital and municipality sources told AFP, weeks after another official was shot dead in the same region. 

Habib-ur-Rahman Mansour, mayor of Faizabad, was killed after his vehicle was targeted by a bomb, a nurse at the Badakhshan provincial hospital told AFP on condition of anonymity.

An employee at the city’s municipality, who also requested anonymity for security reasons, said the mayor “was killed by a bomb planted” near their workplace.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility following the blast.

The bombing comes less than three weeks since the head of the information and culture department in Badakhshan, Zabihullah Amiri, was shot dead while en route to Faizabad.

The branch of the Daesh group in Afghanistan, Daesh-Khorasan, said it had carried out that attack.

Remote Badakhshan has become an important mining hub under the Taliban authorities, which have expanded the sector since returning to power five years ago.

There were clashes in the province in May when security forces sought to destroy opium poppy fields, with two people including a teenager killed.

Taliban officials have vowed to restore security to Afghanistan, but there have been sporadic attacks since 2021.

The regional Daesh branch has claimed some of them, including an explosion at a Chinese restaurant in central Kabul that killed at least seven people in January.

The jihadist group also claimed responsibility for a December 2024 suicide bombing in Kabul that killed refugees minister Khalil Ur-Rahman Haqqani.