Taliban killed 13 ethnic Hazaras, including Afghan soldiers, says Amnesty
The Taliban have killed 13 ethnic Hazaras, including members of the Afghan national security forces who had surrendered to the insurgents, a prominent rights group Amnesty International said on Tuesday.
According to an investigation by Amnesty, the killings of the 11 Afghan national security forces and two civilians, among them a 17-year-old girl, took place in the village of Kahor in Daykundi province in central Afghanistan on August 30, a fortnight after the Taliban recaptured the country. “These cold-blooded executions (of the Hazaras) are further proof that the Taliban are committing the same horrific abuses they were notorious for during their previous rule of Afghanistan,” Amnesty’s secretary general, Agnes Callamard, said, according to AP.
Amnesty said Sadiqullah Abed, the Taliban-appointed chief of police for Daykundi, denied the killings and said that a member of the Taliban had been wounded in an attack in the province. Hazaras make up around 9 per cent of Afghanistan’s 36 million people and are often targeted because they are Shiite Muslims in a Sunni-majority country.
According to the Amnesty report, the Taliban took control of Daykundi province on August 14 and that an estimated 34 former soldiers sought safety in Khidir district. The soldiers, who had government military equipment and weaponry with them, agreed to surrender to the Taliban.
Mohammad Azim Sedaqat, who led the group’s surrender, arranged to decommission the weapons in the presence of Taliban members. Nearly 300 Taliban fighters arrived in a convoy on August 30, close to Dahani Qul village, where the Afghan soldiers were staying, some with family members, according to Amnesty’s report.
Taliban fighters caught up with the leaving security force member and their families and opened fire on the crowd, killing a 17-year-old girl named Masuma. One soldier fired back, killing a Taliban fighter and wounding another. The Taliban continued to shoot as the families fled, killing two soldiers, according to the report. The report added that after nine soldiers surrendered, the Taliban took them to a nearby river basin and killed them. Amnesty said it verified photographs and video evidence taken in the aftermath of the killings.
After the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in a campaign that stunned the world, the Islamist fundamentalist group’s leaders tried to assure Afghans that they will not attack those who supported the western-backed government of Ashraf Ghani and won’t impose the harsh rules followed during their last regime. However, renewed restrictions on women and girls and the appointment of an all-male government have been met with dismay by the international community.