DHAKA: Unknown gunmen shot and seriously injured the top female police officer in Afghanistan’s restive Helmand province on Sunday, just months after her high-profile predecessor was killed, officials said.

Nigar, who like many Afghans uses only one name, was expected to survive the morning attack which came after Islam Bibi was murdered in July in a killing that focused attention on the threat to Afghan women who take on public roles.

Nigar was shot by gunmen on a motorbike in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand, a hotbed of the Islamist insurgency that was launched against the US-backed Kabul government after the fall of the Taliban in 2001.

‘She was walking on the street near the police headquarters,’ provincial government spokesman Omar Zawak told media, reports The Straits Times.

‘She is critically injured and has been admitted to the emergency unit at the hospital.’

BDST: 2016 HRS, SEPT 15, 2013
RoR/RK