A bomb attack has killed the mayor of an Afghan provincial capital, hospital and municipality sources told AFP, weeks after another official was shot dead in the same region.Habib-ur-Rahman Mansour, mayor of Faizabad, was killed after his vehicle was targeted by a bomb on Wednesday (local time), a nurse at the Badakhshan provincial hospital told AFP on condition of anonymity.An employee at the city's municipality, who also requested anonymity for security reasons, said the mayor "was killed by a bomb planted" near their workplace.The blast was claimed by the National Resistance Front, an armed opposition group which wrote on X that it targeted the mayor's vehicle.In a report in May, the United Nations said armed opposition groups "posed no significant challenge" to the Taliban government's control of the country in the three months prior.The Faizabad bombing comes less than three weeks after the head of the information and culture department in Badakhshan, Zabihullah Amiri, was shot dead while en route to the city.The branch of the Islamic State group in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Islamic State-Khorasan, said it had carried out that attack.Remote Badakhshan has become an important mining hub under the Taliban authorities, which have expanded the sector since returning to power five years ago.There were clashes in the province in May when security forces sought to destroy opium poppy fields, with two people, including a teenager, killed.Taliban officials have vowed to restore security to Afghanistan, but there have been sporadic attacks since 2021.The regional IS branch has claimed some of them, including an explosion at a Chinese restaurant in central Kabul that killed at least seven people in January.-AFP