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Kabul: Taliban insurgents pulled some 50 passengers off a bus in southern Afghanistan and beheaded as many as 30 of them after accusing them of being soldiers travelling in civilian clothes, Afghan officials in the region announced on Sunday.
The police chief of Kandahar Province, where the attack occurred, said that of six bodies retrieved so far, all had been beheaded, mutilated and dumped. The police had received information that 24 others had been killed but had yet to find the bodies, the police chief, General Matiullah Qati , said.
The attack occurred Thursday on the main road running from the southern city of Kandahar to the western town of Herat, Qati said. It took place in Maiwand District, which is known as an area with a significant Taliban presence, where attacks on military convoys are frequent. It is also the main road for British and Afghan army troops traveling to Helmand Province, where the insurgency is strongest in the country.
The attack follows a pattern of intimidation and brutality that Taliban insurgents have pursued, spreading terror in an effort to undermine support for the Afghan government.
A Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, confirmed Sunday that the group was responsible for the killings and said that 27 passengers had been taken from a bus three days earlier and killed after appearing before a Taliban court.
"We discovered solid proof and documents that they were with the Afghan National Army, and also we had solid information that they were going to Lashkar Gah to help the army," he said by telephone, referring to the capital of Helmand Province. He said the Taliban had called the men's families to announce that they had been caught and that their throats would be cut.
Afghan officials angrily denied that the passengers were soldiers or police officers and said that they were all men going west to Iran to find work.
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