The former Afghan President, Burhanuddin Rabbani has been killed in Kabul. The professor had been working as part of the Chairman of the High Peace Council in Afghanistan. Mohammad Masoom Stanekzai, the head of the joint secretariat of Afghanistan’s Peace and Reintegration Programme, was also injured.
The UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon, and the NATO Secretary General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, both condemned the attack. Initial reports suggest that a trusted person entered a house where Professor Rabbani was meeting with Taliban negotiators and detonated an explosive vest.
An ethnic Tajik with a masters degree in Islamic philosophy from Al-Azhar University in Egypt, Professor Rabbani had links to the Muslim Brotherhood. His expertise in Islamic academia led to his flight from Kabul during the 1979 Communist coup.
He took part in the resistance to Soviet-backed government in Afghanistan until its fall, leading the Afghan government as President from 1992 until 1996 when the Taliban overran Kabul. He acted as President again in 2001 and formed the political opposition to Hamid Karzai thereafter.