| Hundreds of top Afghan political and military figures gathered in the Panjshir Valley on Wednesday to mark an anniversary many link with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States. Two days before the jetliners crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in rural Pennsylvania, a suicide bomber in Afghanistan killed Ahmad Shah Massood. Massood was a revered warrior and avowed enemy of the Taliban regime. Massood, the leader of the Northern Alliance, was known as the Lion of Panjshir. He was killed by an assassin posing as a journalist who planted a bomb inside a camera that detonated during a Sept. 9, 2001, interview. It’s believed his killing was the work of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda and aimed at eliminating a key enemy just before the attacks on the U.S. The pilgrimage to Massood’s tomb followed a larger memorial service held Tuesday that attracted more than 1,500 people to Massood’s domed, hilltop mausoleum in the Panjshir Valley, about 150 kilometres north of Kabul. |