The Afghan Taliban named an Islamic legal scholar who was one of former leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour's deputies to succeed him on Wednesday, after confirming Mansour's death in a U.S. drone strike at the weekend.
Within an hour of the announcement, a Taliban suicide bomber attacked a shuttle bus carrying court employees west of the Afghan capital, Kabul, killing as many as 11 people and wounding several others, including children.
New Taliban leader Haibatullah Akhundzada was named in a United Nations report last year as former chief of the sharia-based justice system under the Taliban's five-year rule over Afghanistan, which ended with their ouster in 2001.
Sirajuddin Haqqani, head of a feared network blamed for many deadly bomb attacks in Kabul in recent years, and Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob, son of Taliban founder Mullah Mohammad Omar, will serve as deputies.
The announcement, following a meeting of the Taliban's main shura, or leadership council, ended days of confusion during which the Taliban declined to confirm the death of Mansour in a drone strike in Pakistan on Saturday.
"All the shura members have pledged allegiance to Sheikh Haibatullah in a safe place in Afghanistan," the statement said. "All people are required to obey the new Emir-al-Momineen (commander of the faithful)."
Akhundzada, believed to be around 60 years of age and a member of the powerful Noorzai tribe, was a close aide to Omar and is from Kandahar, in the south of Afghanistan and the heartland of the Taliban.
An official Taliban account on Twitter posted an undated photograph purporting to be of Akhundzada, informally known as Mullah Haibatullah, with a white turban and long, graying beard.
The post listed his full title as Emir-ul-Momineen Shiekh ul Quran, or "commander of the faithful, scholar of the Koran".
The Taliban movement banned human images for breaching their strict interpretation of Islam when they governed Afghanistan.
Under their rule, women could only appear in public under a heavy veil and accompanied by a male relative, and they were denied a formal education. Public executions were staged and sports banned.
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