KANDAHAR: Taliban fighters beheaded two boys aged 10 and 16 as a warning to villagers not to cooperate with the Afghan government, officials said.
The boys, identified as Khan and Hameedullah, had travelled to Afghan army and police checkpoints near their home in the southern province of Kandahar, scrounging for leftover food to bring to their families, the officials said.
“The boys were on their way back ... when they were stopped by Taliban insurgents who beheaded them,” the chief of Zhari district, Jamal Agha, said. “Both of them were innocent children and had nothing to do with government or foreigners.” A Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, said the group was not involved in the boys’ killings.
The Kandahar governor’s spokesman, Javid Faisal, said the incident occurred on Sunday. Several hours later their bodies and severed heads were left in their village, he said.
In July last year in the same district, a 16-year-old boy accused by the Taliban of spying for the government was beheaded and skinned. The next month, a girl aged six and a boy aged 12 were kidnapped and beheaded in separate incidents in Kandahar and the east of the country.
Reuters
