India has airlifted a prominent Afghan official for treatment after he was seriously injured in a Taliban attack on January 10 that killed 11 persons, including five diplomats from the United Arab Emirates.
Official sources told The Hindu that the governor of Kandahar, Dr. Humayun Azizi, was evacuated to India following the attack which targeted his official residence where he was meeting a high-level delegation from the UAE that included the Ambassador of UAE to Afghanistan.
Mr. Azizi who was appointed to his post in 2015, is at present undergoing treatment at an undisclosed location in India. According to Afghan media reports, Mr. Azizi, who suffered burn injuries in the attack, was in a stable condition.
India had condemned the attack as “dastardly” and “heinous” and Prime Minister Narendra Modi had pledged support to President Ashraf Ghani to counter terror strikes from Taliban.
“This dastardly terrorist attack is all the more condemnable as the UAE ambassador was in Kandahar on a humanitarian mission to lay foundation stone for the Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan centre for orphans,” said a statement issued by the Ministry of External Affairs on Thursday.
India has provided medical support to a number of terror-attack victims from conflict zones in recent years. Soldiers from Iraq fighting the IS in Mosul have been receiving treatment in a prominent hospital in Delhi.
