Two employees of Afghanistan’s human rights body were killed in a bomb attack in Kabul on Saturday, Agence France-Presse said on 27 June 2020.
The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission said the pair died when a homemade ‘sticky bomb’ attached to their vehicle exploded in the morning. Kabul police spokesman Ferdaws Faramurz confirmed the attack, which has not been claimed by any group.
‘There can be no justification for attacks against human rights defenders,’ United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan said on Twitter, calling for an immediate probe.
One of the victims was twenty-four-year-old Fatima Khalil, known as Natasha, was a shining example of young, progressive Afghanistan. Born a refugee in Quetta, Pakistan, she won a U.S. Embassy scholarship to study human rights at an American university in Kyrgyzstan. She spoke six languages, was a straight-A student, loved dancing and could have worked overseas like many educated Afghans to escape her country’s constant conflict, according to her family. Instead, she decided to move to Kabul last year to work as a donor coordinator for the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission. https://news.trust.org/item/20200630144519-wd9kl/
It comes less than a week after two prosecutors and three other employees from the attorney general’s office were shot dead by gunmen on the outskirts of Kabul. On May 30, a television journalist was killed when a minibus carrying employees of private television channel Khurshid TV was hit by a roadside bomb in the city. That attack was claimed by the Islamic State group.
Violence had dropped across much of the country after the Taliban offered a brief ceasefire to mark the Eid al-Fitr festival last month, but officials say the insurgents have stepped up attacks in recent weeks.
https://www.newagebd.net/article/109619/bomb-kills-2-rights-workers-in-kabul
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 