KABUL, Afghanistan -- A NATO airstrike destroyed a Taliban command post in southern Afghanistan, killing a suspected senior militant leader, the alliance said Friday. Separately, an assailant gunned down an Afghan lawmaker who, under the former Taliban regime, oversaw the destruction of two Buddha statues carved into a cliff.

Maulavi Mohammed Islam Mohammadi, who was the Taliban's governor of Bamiyan province when the fifth-century Buddha statues were blown up with dynamite and artillery in March 2001, was killed on his way to Friday prayers in Kabul, said Zulmai Khan, Kabul's deputy police chief.

Mohammadi was elected in 2005 to represent the northern province of Samangan in Afghanistan's parliament.

After he was elected, Mohammadi said he should not be held responsible for the destruction of the statues, which the Taliban considered to be idolatrous and anti-Muslim.

"It was foreigners like Chechens and Arabs with the Taliban who made the decision. They were crazy people," Mohammadi told The Associated Press at the time. "Even though I was governor, I had no power."

International outcry followed the destruction of the giant Buddhas, which were chiseled into a cliff and famed for their size and location along the ancient Silk Road linking Europe and Central Asia. Archaeologists in Bamiyan have been painstakingly collecting the stone remains of the two statues _ and are considering rebuilding them.
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