KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – A young man has been shot dead under unclear circumstances in the Kayan area of Khadir district in central Afghanistan’s Daikundi province, local sources confirmed to KabulNow.
A source told KabulNow that the victim was identified as Hassan Khudai, approximately 21 years old.
According to the source, Khudai owned a shop near his home in Kayan and usually slept there at night. At around 3:20 a.m. on Friday, October 23, gunshots were heard in the area. Shortly afterward, Khudai called his mother and told her that something had happened to him.
When his family members arrived at the shop, he was no longer able to speak. He died a short time later, the source said. The bullet had struck him below the throat.
Another source close to Khudai said the gunfire had come through the shop’s window.
The identity of the person or people responsible for the killing remains unknown. According to the sources, Khudai’s family said they had no known disputes or enmities with anyone.
The sources added that Taliban security officials visited the area on Thursday to investigate the incident, but their inquiries had not yielded any results by the time of reporting.
Khudai was buried on Thursday in the Kayan area, the sources said.
He had returned home from Iran last year and had been working as a shopkeeper and farmer.
Daikundi is a mountainous province in central Afghanistan, with a predominantly Hazara population. The province has experienced decades of conflict and insecurity, while residents in remote districts often face limited access to public services and economic opportunities. However, the circumstances of Khudai’s killing remain unclear, and no motive has been established.
The killing comes amid broader concerns over violent crime and suspicious deaths in Afghanistan since the Taliban returned to power in August 2021. A 38-year-old man, Dawood Jan, was killed and his father injured in a land dispute involving his paternal cousins in Ali Khan Qala, near Pul-e-Alam, the capital of Logar province, on October 19, according to local sources cited by KabulNow.
According to the European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA), which reviewed available reports on crime trends in Afghanistan in February 2026, Rawadari, an Afghan human rights organization, documented at least 251 people killed or injured in targeted, mysterious and extrajudicial killings during the first half of 2025, a 30 percent increase compared with the same period in 2024.
The EUAA also noted that comprehensive crime statistics are unavailable in Afghanistan and that reporting on violent crime remains insufficient to establish its overall scale reliably.
