At least three female employees of the Afghan television channel Anikaas TV have been shot dead on Tuesday in the city of Jalalabad, capital of the province of Nangarhar (east), according to the authorities of the Central Asian country.
Sources have indicated that the victims were targeted in an attack by unidentified gunmen. The women have been identified as Mursal Habibi, Nazia and Saadia, as reported by the Afghan television channel Ariana.
The owner of the channel, Zalmay Latifi, said that the three women were shopping in a market in the city when they were shot, adding that the armed groups present in the area – the Taliban and Islamic State – are opposed to their broadcasts, according to the German news agency DPA.
For the moment no group has claimed responsibility for the attack, which took place nearly three months after the murder of Malala Maiuand, a presenter on the same television channel. The Afghan Journalists Safety Committee (AJSC) has called on the government to investigate the incidents.
The country is in the midst of an upsurge in violence despite peace talks that began in February between the government and the Taliban following the historic February 2020 agreement between the United States and the insurgents.
In this regard, the United Nations pointed last week to an increase in civilian casualties in Afghanistan since the start of the peace talks, with a 45 percent increase in the last quarter of the year compared to the same period in 2019.
Likewise, the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) indicated in January that there had been a significant rise in targeted killings in this period, with journalists, lawyers, activists and officials killed in dozens of attacks in the country.
