Kabul, Afghanistan ? Prime Minister Hamid Karzai accused six senior government officials of killing the country’s aviation minister and said Friday that they were motivated by a long-standing feud. Three were arrested and the others were being sought in Saudi Arabia.

The officials include generals and members of the intelligence service and the justice ministry, said Karzai’s information minister, Abdul Rahim Makhdoom.

The aviation and tourism minister, Abdul Rahman, was killed Thursday in what appeared to be a mob attack on his plane at Kabul’s airport by pilgrims angry that they had been unable to travel to Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Witnesses and officials had said pilgrims beat the minister to death and tossed his body to the tarmac.

Karzai, however, said the attack “has nothing to do with hajjis” or those making the pilgrimage.

“He was killed by people who planned it,” Karzai told reporters at a hastily called news conference. “We are asking the Saudis to arrest them and bring them back. … We will try them. We will put them behind bars.”

It was unclear whether he was suggesting that the officials incited the mob and whether the pilgrims gave cover to a deliberate attack. Rahman was going to New Delhi, India, with a delegation on government business.

Before Karzai spoke, Makhdoom gave journalists five names of men he said were wanted in connection with the attack on aviation minister Abdul Rahman.

The information minister said three were believed to have left on flights for Saudi Arabia along with pilgrims traveling there: Gen. Abdullah Jan Tawhidi, the deputy intelligence chief; Gen. Kalandar Beg, deputy of the technical office of the defense ministry; and an official of the Justice Ministry for whom only one name was given, Halim.

Three are already under arrest in connection with the case; one was identified only as Abdul Rehim.

Karzai, the country’s interim leader, suggested that the killing was linked to a blood feud dating back to the struggle against the Taliban. All the five he named were part of a faction of the northern alliance with which Rahman had broken.

“All this … goes back to the days of the resistance,” Karzai said, without giving any details. “We are trying to do justice.”

Rahman had been a member of the Jamiat e-Islami party, which is the northern alliance faction of ex-President Burhanuddin Rabbani and slain opposition leader Ahmed Shah Massood. But sometime during the Taliban years, he left the party and switched his alliance to a group loyal to exiled king Zaher Shah.