NYT:
The Taliban gunned down the deputy mayor of Kandahar, perhaps the city’s most effective and admired public official, late on Monday, demonstrating their ability to kill almost anyone in a region where security continues to worsen ahead of a planned summer offensive.
And in eastern Afghanistan on Monday, a NATO convoy shot to death four unarmed civilians in a vehicle, including a police officer and 12-year-old student, according to local Afghan officials. But without offering proof, NATO described the dead as two insurgents and their “associates” — a disagreement that could prompt another dispute with the Afghan government over civilian casualties.
Kandahar was the power center of the Taliban before the United States-led invasion in 2001, and attempts to secure the surrounding province from Taliban guerrillas and institute new governance programs this summer could be crucial to the fate of the eight-and-a-half-year occupation. With only weeks to go before the offensive, the Taliban have been stepping up violence in the city with a series of assassinations and attacks on American and Western contractors, political officials and religious leaders.
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