A provincial council member was killed in Afghanistan when security forces members tried to arrest him in cases involving the murders of a journalist and a deputy provincial head of Ghor province, TOLOnews reported. 

In a statement released by the National Directorate of Security (NDS) said, Ezatullah Bik, a Ghor Provincial Council member, was killed on Thursday when he resisted his arrest by the forces. Bik was a suspect in the killings of a local journalist, Bismillah Atil Ahmed, and Abdul Rahman Aimaq, the deputy of the Ghor Provincial Council. 

“Instead of surrendering, Bik started fighting with NDS forces and was killed,” reads the statement. One of the NDS officers, involved in the operation, was also killed during the clashes while three were wounded. 

Bismillah Atil, a local radio journalist and a civil society activist, was killed on 1 January this year by unknown gunmen. While the deputy governor was killed in a magnetic IED bombing on 15 December last year. 

If the involvement of the provincial lawmaker is indeed true, this would be the first known case in recent times where republic members are involved in such killings through IED bombings. 

At a time when the already divided Afghan Republic is negotiating a tough power-sharing agreement with the Taliban, such incidents will further weaken the credibility of the Afghan government that often holds the Taliban responsible for the killings of journalists and other members of the civil societies.