Afghan president, Karzai-top adviser shot dead

Five gunmen stormed into the house, killed the president's aide a top adviser to Afghan President Hamid Karzai and a member of the country's parliament in Kabul yesterday, just days after the president's brother was gunned down.A senior aide to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Jan Mohammad Khan, and deputy of the lower chamber of the Afghan parliament Hasham Atanwal have been killed in the Kapisa province, a source at the Afghan Interior Ministry said on Sunday.Armed men started a gun battle at the house of Jan Mohammad Khan, a former governor of southern Uruzgan province. MP Hashim Watanwal was also killed, said witnesses who had seen the bodies of both men being brought out.

Taliban on Monday claimed the overnight killing of one of Afghan President Hamid Karzai's key advisers, who died along with a lawmaker in an attack on his home in Kabul.Jan Mohammad Khan, the former governor of southern Uruzgan province and a key ally of the embattled president, was killed along with an MP for Uruzgan.

"We killed Jan Mohammad Khan. We made him pay for his deeds," Taliban's spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahed, told by telephone from an undisclosed location-reports-Geotv