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January 18th, 2021 
Awake Goy
Two Afghan women judges have been assassinated in the country’s capital in an attack that has been blamed on the Taliban.
Gunmen shot dead the two unnamed judges, who worked for the Supreme Court, on Sunday in Kabul, where a new trend of targeted killings of high-profile figures have sown fear in the restive city.
Afghanistan’s Supreme Court was a target in February 2017 when a suicide bomb ripped through a crowd of court employees, killing at least 20 and wounding 41.
Sunday’s attack happened as the judges drove to their office in a court vehicle, Ahmad Fahim Qaweem, a spokesman for the Supreme Court said.
‘Unfortunately, we have lost two women judges in today’s attack. Their driver is wounded,’ Qaweem told AFP news agency, adding that more than 200 female judges work for the country’s top court.
Kabul police confirmed the attack, which no group has claimed so far.
US Charge D’Affaires Ross Wilson blamed the attack on the Taliban. It comes just two days after the Pentagon announced it had cut troop levels in Afghanistan to 2,500, the lowest number in nearly two decades.
‘The Taliban should understand that such actions for which it bears responsibility outrage the world and must cease if peace is to come to Afghanistan,’ Wilson wrote on Twitter.
Relatives attended the funeral for one of the slain judges on Sunday.
The shooting came just hours after a high-level meeting between the Taliban negotiation team and US special envoy for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad, along with the head of US forces in Afghanistan, General Scott Miller, according to tweets by a Taliban spokesman.
During the sit-down, spokesman Mohammad Naeem said the armed group had called again for the release of its remaining jailed fighters, along with the removal of the Taliban from a UN blacklist.
The Afghan government has already released almost 5,000 Taliban inmates despite widespread concern that the fighters would be used to reinforce the insurgents’ ranks.
Violence has surged in Afghanistan in recent months despite ongoing peace talks between the Taliban and the government.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has accused the Taliban of launching an ‘illegitimate war and hostility’.
‘The government once again reiterates its call on the Taliban that violence, terror, brutality and crimes… will only prolong the war in the country,’ he said in a statement issued by the presidential palace.
The head of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission also condemned the recent spate of murders, calling the ongoing killings a ‘systematic massacre’.
‘Afghanistan is losing one of its most important gains, its educated & professional cadre, in what seems to be a systematic massacre & the world seems to be just watching. This must stop,’ tweeted Shaharzad Akbar.
The killing also spurred a rare statement from the Chinese embassy in Kabul, offering condolences to the victims’ families.
In recent months, several prominent Afghans – including politicians, journalists, activists, doctors and prosecutors – have been assassinated in often brazen daytime attacks in Kabul and other cities.
Many journalists and activists have left the country, worried they might be the next targets.
Afghan officials have steadfastly blamed the Taliban for the assassinations, a charge the group has denied.
Some of these killings have been claimed by the rival jihadist Islamic State group.
Earlier this month the US military for the first time directly accused the Taliban of orchestrating these attacks.
‘The Taliban’s campaign of unclaimed attacks and targeted killings of government officials, civil society leaders & journalists must… cease for peace to succeed,’ Colonel Sonny Leggett, spokesman for US forces in Afghanistan, said on Twitter.
The targeted killings have surged despite the Taliban and Afghan government engaging in peace talks in the Qatari capital of Doha.
Afghan government negotiators engaged in peace talks with their Taliban counterparts are pushing for a permanent ceasefire as part of the agenda for the talks, but the insurgents so far have dismissed the calls for any type of truce.
The Taliban carried out more than 18,000 attacks in 2020, Afghanistan’s spy chief Ahmad Zia Siraj told lawmakers earlier this month.
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