Agencies  --  Arab News

KABUL, 16 April 2004 — Armed attackers killed the police chief of Mizan and nine of his bodyguards in an apparent revenge attack in Afghanistan’s southern Zabul province, police said yesterday. Muhammad Ayub, Zabul chief of security told Deutsche Presse- Agentur that the incident took place on Wednesday, in the Shah Wali Kot district of the province.

“According to our information, it was not a political murder,” Ayub said, adding that there was old enmity between Yar Muhammad, the chief of police of Mizan district, and his killers. He said, according to reports, that last year Muhammad had killed four men in the same province, and it was likely the attackers were seeking revenge for the killings.

Ayub also said that during the firefight, one of the attackers was killed and another injured. The attack on the senior commander happened hours after a bomb blast in the neighboring province of Kandahar that injured a senior policeman, two of his bodyguards and a civilian.

Since early January, at least more than 140 people, including remnants of the Taleban, Afghan and foreign troops, civilian and aid workers have been killed in different attacks and clashes, mainly in the south and southeast, as well as western Afghanistan provinces.

The US military, meanwhile, pulled back from predictions of capturing Osama Bin Laden this year, saying such a deadline was “difficult.” “I am very reluctant to predict any kind of time-line for the capture of any HVT (high value target) but I will say it is the highest priority,” Maj. Gen. Eric Olson, commander of 25th Infantry Division, told reporters at the coalition’s Bagram Air Base headquarters north of Kabul.

The whereabouts of the Al-Qaeda leader — alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks in the United States in 2001 - have been unknown since the United States launched a military campaign in Afghanistan one month after the attacks.

But Olson refrained from committing to a deadline. “I would do neither, I just say we will continue to hunt, it is as a top priority mission for all the coalition forces here but it is very difficult to accomplish along this kind of timeline.”

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers arrived in Kabul yesterday to begin his four-day visit to Afghanistan, UN officials said. This visit is Lubbers’ first to Afghanistan this year, and his sixth to the region since 2001.

Lubbers was scheduled to meet Afghan President Hamid Karzai at the presidential palace late yesterday afternoon, and is expected to meet a number of Afghan Cabinet ministers, as well as the heads of UN agencies and the ISAF commander.