Mohammad Dawood Muzammil’s killing comes a day after he met top government officials visiting from capital Kabul.
A bomb blast in Afghanistan’s northern Balkh province has killed three people, including its Taliban governor, police said.
“Two people, including Mohammad Dawood Muzammil, the governor of Balkh, have been killed in an explosion this morning,” police spokesman Asif Waziri said on Thursday.
Waziri said the blast happened on the second floor of his office in the provincial capital of Mazar-i-Sharif.
“It was a suicide attack. We don’t have information as to how the suicide bomber reached the office of the governor,” he said, adding that two people were also wounded.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but a regional affiliate of the ISIL group is a key rival of the ruling Taliban.
The killing of Muzammil, known for his resistance to the ISIL in the area, came a day after he met top government officials visiting from capital Kabul.
The killing makes Muzammil one of the highest-ranking figures slain since the Taliban stormed back to power in 2021.
Violence across Afghanistan dramatically dropped since the Taliban seized control, but the security situation has again deteriorated with ISIL claiming several deadly attacks.
Authorities deployed extra security at the governorate and forbade journalists from taking photos, a correspondent of the AFP news agency reported from near the site of the blast.
Muzammil was “martyred in an explosion by the enemies of Islam”, tweeted Taliban government’s spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid.
