Afghan minister is killed in air crash

A senior Afghan minister was killed in an air crash yesterday, dealing a further blow to President Hamid Karzai's efforts to establish his transitional government.

Juma Mohammed Mohammedi, the Minister for Mines and Industries, was the third senior official lost to Mr Karzai's administration in a year. Mr Mohammedi, a member of the Afghan diaspora who returned from the United States to help to rebuild the country after the fall of the Taliban, was among eight people killed when the twin-engined Cessna 402 in which they were travelling crashed into the Arabian Sea. It happened shortly after take-off from the port city of Karachi in southern Pakistan. The aircraft was en route to Jazak in south-western Baluchistan, reportedly to inspect a copper mine.

Two days earlier the head of the Pakistani air force and 16 others were killed when their plane crashed into a mountainside in heavy fog during what officials said was a routine mission.

Mr Karzai's government is still seeking to establish control in most of Afghanistan, where large swaths of territory are controlled by warlords, and where the US war on the Taliban and al-Qa'ida is not yet complete.

Yesterday two people were killed – including an Afghan soldier working with US Special Forces – in a firefight involving American troops in central Afghanistan. The Americans said the other fatality was an "enemy fighter" – meaning a suspected militiaman from the Taliban or its allies.

President Karzai described yesterday's air crash as a "major loss". In February last year, his Tourism Minister, Abdul Rehman, was assassinated at Kabul airport. In July, Haji Abdul Qadir, the Vice-President, was shot dead in an ambush in Kabul.