NewsBreakingOnline

• Former president and peace envoy killed in bomb blast • Hopes of settlement in tatters after assassination • Hamid Karzai to fly home from UN summit 5.12pm: Rabbani occupied a prominent position on the world stage for decades. These photographs- from 1980, 1988 and 2001- trace his career. Jon Boone, in Kabul, said Rabbani was meeting two insurgents, in his role as head of the high peace council, when he was killed by a suicide bomb: In a phone call from Kabul , Boone said: There were two insurgents in there and it hasn’t been confirmed whether one or both of those insurgents were responsible for the blast but from the witnesses, or bystanders, who were not too far from the building it’s most likely that the blast came from within rather than outside the building. He said suspicion is likely to fall on the Haqqani network, which is based in Pakistan. They have been fingered for most of the recent serious attacks in Kabul. They are the ones the US government have consistently said are the closest to the Pakistani military. It is thought by most analysts that the Pakistanis want to have a high degree of control and influence over peace talks. On the consequences for Afghan politics and the prospects of a peace deal, he says: It potentially or almost certainly blows Hamid Karzai’s entire peace agenda out of the water. Lots of analysts have argued that he [Karzai] isn’t really sincere about peace, maybe by appointing Rabbani who actually is very controversial, not particularly liked by the insurgents [and] maybe wasn’t particularly serious in the first place. Nonetheless this is what Karzai has invested in very heavily over the past 18 months. [The] second issue is this man Rabbani was an extremely important figure amongst northern non-Pashtun, and in general, anti-Taliban Afghans. Now these people are crucial. Their buy-in is vital if there’s ever going to be a successful peace deal. Now the insurgents, we don’t know which particular group, have taken out one of their great leaders….so I think this is going to play havoc with Afghan politics. 4.44pm: The Guardian’s Jon Boone has this latest update on this afternoon’s dramatic events. The assassination of Rabbani has dealt a huge blow to hopes that the war in Afghanistan might end through a negotiated settlement, he writes: Such an apparently deliberate attack on a still-embryonic peace process that has created tensions within Afghanistan and between its neighbours is likely to tip the country further into political crisis. 4.18pm: Hamid Karzai’s office has said the President will fly back from the United Nationals General Assembly in New York soon. 4.15pm: A quick update from Jon Boone: Outside the military hospital close to the scene of the attack, Habibulllah, a distraught close friend of Rabbani, tells The Guardian that the former president was killed by a suicide bomber who concealed the explosives under his turban. 4.07pm: The Guardian’s correspondent in Kabul, Jon Boone, has just called the phone of Masoom Stanekzai, the senior High Peace Council official also wounded in today’s attack. He writes: The man who answered would not reveal his name, but said that although Stanekzai has a serious leg injury he was well enough to speak on the phone to Hamid Karzai, who is currently in New York. The man said he was certain that a suicide bomber was responsible, but it was not yet clear whether the culprit was one of the Taliban guests Rabbani had been holding talks with in his house. 4.00pm: The New York Times met and spoke with Rabbani in January 2002, shortly after Hamid Karzai became Afghanistan’s interim president. Here’s the result of the encounter, which gives an intriguing flavour of Rabbani’s life as an elder statesman. In it, journalist Amy Waldman writes that the transfer of power to Karzai had been orderly, but awkward: Mr. Rabbani had no formal post to retreat to and no portfolio to preside over. It seemed unclear exactly what he would do. All is now clear: he will continue to act much like Afghanistan’s president. He has a security entourage larger than former President Bill Clinton’s. He lives in the presidential compound, in a large quasi-modernist house called Castle No. 1. His guards control the compound, and have sometimes seemed uninterested in ensuring that visitors also see Mr. Karzai. And all day long, a stone’s throw from the seat of the interim government, Mr. Rabbani receives visitors from all over the country coming to pay their respects, or seek advice or ask him to press their case with officials he appointed. With the transfer of power, Mr. Rabbani said in an interview at Castle No. 1 last night, he thought he would have fewer commitments than before. Instead he finds that he is busier than ever. 3.52pm: Reuters are reporting that a senior advisor to Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, was also caught up in the blast that killed Rabbani. A senior police source is quoted as saying: Masoom Stanekzai is alive but badly wounded. 3.37pm: The head of Afghanistan’s high peace council, former President Burhanuddin Rabbani, has been killed in Kabul, a senior police officer said. His death is another blow to the security situation in Kabul, coming just a week after a 20-hour seige in Kabul’s heavily diplomatic enclave . Rabbani lived in the so-called green zone. It was Rabbani’s task to try to to negotiate a political end to the war. However, the peace council had made little headway since it was formed a year ago. He was president of the Afghan government that preceded the Taliban, having been leader of a powerful mujahideen party during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980. After he was driven from Kabul in 1996, he became the nominal head of the Northern Alliance, mostly minority Tajiks and Uzbeks, who swept to power in Kabul after the Taliban’s fall. Rabbani is an ethnic Tajik. “Rabbani has been martyred,” Mohammed Zahir, head of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Kabul Police, told Reuters. He had no further details. Afghanistan Taliban Lizzy Davies Haroon Siddique guardian.co.uk