Afghan President Hamid Karzai, center, leaves after attending the funeral procession of Afghanistan's influential Vice President Mohammad Qasim Fahim in Kabul, Afghanistan, Tuesday, March 11, 2014. Fahim, a leading commander in the alliance that fought the Taliban who was later accused with other warlords of targeting civilian areas during the country's civil war, died on Sunday, March 9, 2014. He was 57. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)

KABUL - The Swedish Embassy has confirmed that a Swedish journalist has been killed in Kabul, and Afghan police say two suspects have been arrested.

Embassy counsellor Christian Nilsson tells The Associated Press that Nils Horner, the Asia correspondent for Swedish Radio, was killed on Tuesday. Nilsson says Horner was in his 50s.

Sayed Gul Agha Hashimi, the head of the Kabul Criminal Investigation Department, says the man was working for a Swedish news organization when he was shot in an affluent area in the capital. Hashimi says two suspects have been arrested.

Hashimi says the journalist died while being treated at the hospital.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

Thousands of Afghans waving flags and chanting crowded into a cemetery in Kabul on Tuesday after President Hamid Karzai presided over a funeral service for the country's powerful vice-president.

Vice-President Mohammad Qasim Fahim, who died on Sunday at 57, was an ethnic Tajik and a leading commander in the Northern Alliance, which battled the Taliban for years and helped the U.S. in ousting the Islamic militant movement from power in 2001. His death came a month before presidential elections to choose a successor to Karzai, who is barred from seeking a third term.

At a funeral service earlier in the presidential palace, Karzai lauded him for always promoting national interest.

"I lost my best friend and my brother," Karzai said, surrounded by tribal leaders and other Afghan dignitaries and foreign diplomats. "He was always with me in making important decisions on international and domestic issues."

The flag-covered coffin was then taken to a cemetery in Kabul, where thousands of people thronged the ambulance as it carried the body to the gravesite.

Fahim was an ethnic Tajik who was the top deputy of Ahmad Shah Massoud, the charismatic Northern Alliance commander who was killed in an al-Qaida suicide bombing two days before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

He was widely accused of marginalizing Pashtuns in the years after the Taliban were ousted, but later reconciled with Karzai and was widely considered somebody who could mediate between factions.

Karzai's office said Fahim — who held the rank of field marshal and had survived several assassination attempts, most recently in 2009 in northern Afghanistan — died of natural causes in Kabul.

News from © The Associated Press, 2014