AFP
01/04/2006
By

KANDAHAR - Unknown assailants decapitated an Afghan school principal in his house in southern Afghanistan's Zabul province, officials said.

The family of the 45-year-old victim, Abdul Habib, along with three other people were in the house at the time of the murder in Zabul's Qalat district late Tuesday, they said on Wednesday.

Zabul education minister Mohammad Nabi Khushal said Habib, who was principal of a school for boys, had no personal enmity and blamed the killing on "the enemies of Afghanistan," a term usually used for Taliban insurgents.

Police had detained for questioning the three men who were in the house when Habib was beheaded, provincial government spokesman Gulab Shah Alikhil said.

Neither the education minister nor the government spokesman could say how many attackers were involved or whether there was any resistance.

The latest attack comes some three weeks after suspected militants fired on a school in the neighboring Helmand province, killing a student and a janitor.

The December 16 attack followed the killing of a teacher also in Helmand the same week.

Insurgents continue to carry out attacks more than four years after the Taliban were toppled by a US-led invasion in late 2001 for harbouring Al-Qaeda mastermind     Osama bin Laden.

Violence blamed on the remnants of the Taliban killed nearly 1,600 people in 2005, making it the bloodiest year since the militia was ousted.