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Shyam Bhatia in Kabul
Kabul is in shock and armed soldiers have taken up positions at road intersections following a terrorist attack that a killed a senior vice-president and the leading Pashtun in the government of President Hamid Karzai.
There are fears in the Afghan capital that more government ministers could be targets of what is seen as a terrorist attack planned and executed by the notorious Al Qaeda group led by Saudi fugitive Osama bin Laden.
Haji Qadeer, vice president and minister of public works and governor of Nangarhar province was shot at point blank range by two gunmen as he drove out of his ministry at 12:45pm.
The men who shot him were dressed in civilian clothes and were masked.
Rediff.com counted 21 bullet holes in the wind screen and body of the green coloured Toyota Land Cruiser that crashed into a wall just outside the ministry after the attack.
The killers managed to escape in a taxi. Investigators have so far arrested ten men, including a cigarette seller and a bicycle mechanic who was standing outside the premises.
The killing of Qadeer, aged 48 and father of 12 children, threatened the delicate ethnic balance in the Karzai cabinet made up of Tajiks, Pashtuns, Uzbeks, and Hazaras.
Qadeer was the Pashtun leader, most trusted by his tribe's traditional rivals, the Tajiks, who took control of Kabul last November after driving out the fundamentalist Taliban.
"It's a national disaster for the whole country and in particular for the Tajiks," said Deputy Interior Minister Deen Muhammed Jorat, who is leading the investigation.
He told rediff.com: "Haji Qadeer was a big man and the second martyr after Ahmed Shah Masoud. He was the man who helped the Tajiks and we considered this a national tragedy."
Jorat added that in his opinion the killing was clearly a terrorist operation and inside job.
"I am responsible for security in Kabul," said Jorat who is also an army general. He went on to explain that when security guards were changed a few months ago at Qudeer's ministry, they were not vetted by his security experts.
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