Taliban shoot dead women's rights activist

Sitara Achikzai, an Afghan women's rights activist and provincial legislator in her 50s, was shot by Taliban gunmen on Sunday outside her home in Kandahar. She was one of three women sitting on the provincial council.Taliban gunmen on motorbikes gunned down a woman provincial legislator in Afghanistan Sunday as authorities said they had killed 40 more Taliban in their battle to defeat the extremists.Legislator Sitara Achikzai, a high school teacher and women's rights activist in her 50s, was shot dead outside her home in the volatile southern city of Kandahar, the head of the council, Ahmad Wali Karzai, told AFP."She has been martyred by two men on motorbikes and the case is under investigation," said Karzai, brother of President Hamid Karzai.A spokesman for the insurgent Taliban movement, Yousuf Ahmadi, told AFP by telephone that his militia had carried out the assassination.Achikzai was targeted because she did not have a "good background," he said, without explaining what this meant.The Taliban -- who had restrictive policies against women when they were in government between 1996 and 2001, including barring them from work outside of the home -- have carried out similar assassinations in Kandahar.They admitted to shooting dead the country's most high-profile female police officer in the city last year and are also suspected of the 2006 assassination of head of the provincial women's affairs department.The fundamentalists were also blamed for an attack in Kandahar in November last year in which acid was sprayed into the faces of schoolgirls.