US handover at risk as turban bomb kills mayor of Kandahar

Ghulam Haidar Hamidi, an ally of president Hamid Karzai, was killed in a courtyard in his office by explosives hidden in a visitor's turban, officials said.

His daughter, Rangina, 31, said he knew his life was in danger but insisted on working on.

"I begged him, 'Please don't go, please quit,' but he said he would work to his last breath, and that's what happened," she told The Scotsman, from Kandahar.

His death came just two weeks after the president's half-brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, was gunned down in his Kandahar home by a close associate.

Their deaths - together with the murder of an adviser to Mr Karzai in Kabul last week - have raised fresh doubts about what US President Barack Obama called "fragile and reversible gains" in the region.

Jan Mohammed Khan, a former governor of Oruzgan province and senior member of Mr Karzai's Popalzai tribe, was killed when suicide bombers stormed his house in Kabul on the day Nato began handing responsibility for security to Afghan forces.

Kandahar was the focus of Mr Obama's 30,000-soldier surge and it is still seen as a key test of whether America can stem Taleban violence and build an Afghan government worthy of the name.

Rangina said she thought her father was killed for refusing "to support Karzai's thugs, who are in power". "I don't think the Taleban killed him," she said. "It was elements within the government."

However, the mayor's critics said he worked too closely with Mr Karzai's family. One businessman, forced to flee Afghanistan, said Mr Hamidi was a stooge, unfairly and illegally promoting the Karzais' vast business empires. Notably, Mr Hamidi helped Mahmood Karzai, the president's millionaire brother and a former shareholder in Afghanistan's failed Kabul Bank, acquire government land on the edge of Kandahar for a luxury, gated housing development. Afghanistan's Ministry of Defence later accused the Karzai's of stealing the land.

Mr Hamidi, a childhood friend of the Karzais, lived in America for 30 years before he was appointed mayor in 2006. Since then two of his deputies have been shot. He narrowly escaped an attack on his car in 2009.

"We knew this would happen," said Rangina, who runs a women's charity in Kandahar. "We were just waiting for this day.

"He was not just my father, he was a great man and he gave his life for his work."

At the time of his death, Mr Hamidi, 63, was meeting petitioners about a land dispute, officials said. "One of the visitors had hidden explosive in his turban (and] detonated the bomb at his office," said Zalmai Ayoubi, the governor's spokesman.A turban bomb was also used to attack mourners in the city's Red Mosque, the day after Ahmed Wali died. A cleric and three worshippers were killed.

Two days before Mr Hamidi's death, he had ordered homes "built illegally" on government land to be destroyed, upsetting local power brokers.