A former female member of Afghanistan’s now disbanded lower house of parliament has been shot dead during a break-in at her home in the Afghan capital, Taliban officials have confirmed.
Mursal Nabidzadah was shot dead along with a bodyguard when gunmen broke into her house in the Ahmad Shah Baba area of Kabul on January 15, Khalid Zadran, a Taliban spokesman for the Kabul police said. He added that Nadidzadah’s brother was injured in the incident.
No further details were immediately available. No one has yet claimed responsibility for the attack.
The killing has sparked international condemnation, including from Hannah Neumann, a German member of the Greens/EFA faction in the European Parliament.
"She was killed in darkness, but the Taliban build their system of gender apartheid in full daylight," Neumann wrote on Twitter.
Since returning to power in August 2021, the Taliban has taken a hard line, crushing women’s rights.
In the latest move, the Taliban on December 24 banned women from working for aid groups. It followed a ban imposed earlier that month on women attending universities. Girls were stopped from attending high school in March.
On January 13, the United States pushed the UN Security Council to adopt a resolution calling on the Taliban-led authorities in Afghanistan to reverse those bans on women.
The 15-member council met privately at the request of the United Arab Emirates and Japan to discuss the issue, Reuters reported.
The United Nations estimates that 85 percent of NGOs in Afghanistan have partially or fully shut down operations because of the ban, which is the Taliban's latest step to drive women from public life.
Earlier this week, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation -- an intergovernmental group consisting of all Muslim-majority countries -- rejected the Taliban's claim that its treatment of Afghan women and girls is in line with Islam's Shari'a law.