KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, 13 August 2005 — Suspected Taleban militants beheaded four people including a policeman for allegedly spying for the US-led military in southern Afghanistan, officials and the Islamic militia said yesterday. A road worker and three insurgents from the ousted fundamentalist movement were also killed in the latest outbursts of violence ahead of key parliamentary elections next month, officials said.
Two people, one of them a police officer, were kidnapped and later beheaded on Thursday in the southeastern province of Helmand, a high-ranking police official told AFP on condition of anonymity. Abdul Latif Hakimi, who says he speaks for the Taleban, claimed responsibility. “We killed them - we beheaded them - because they were American spies,” he told AFP by telephone from an undisclosed location.
Two other Afghans who were captured by the Taleban on the same day also had their heads chopped off for allegedly spying in neighboring Zabul province, Hakimi said. The police official confirmed Hakimi’s claims. The beheadings came two days after Taleban rebels shot dead a woman in Zabul for supposedly spying.
Separately, an Afghan road worker was killed and another was badly wounded when militants from the Taleban ambushed their vehicle in Shahjoy district of Zabul on Thursday, the scene of many attacks by the militia in recent months. “One road worker was killed and one was wounded in a Taleban ambush,” police chief, Abdul Saboor said.
Also in Zabul on the same day, three Taleban rebels were killed in other fighting between Taleban and security forces, Saboor said, adding that two policemen were wounded.
A Taleban commander was shot dead and an American soldier died in a training accident as violence continued ahead of Afghanistan’s parliamentary elections scheduled for next month, officials said yesterday. A homemade bomb also exploded in a busy market in the southern city of Kandahar, wounding four people including a woman and child.
A US military statement said Taleban commander Qari Amadullah was killed near Wazikhwa in eastern Afghanistan on Tuesday. “Amadullah was believed to have commanded up to 50 Taleban fighters in the region and was thought to be in possession of a number of weapon systems to include rockets and rocket propelled grenades,” it said.
Hakimi confirmed the incident. Amadullah was killed during a clash with Afghan soldiers and US paratroopers in which five other militants died and three US servicemen were wounded. “Killing this individual will significantly disrupt Taleban operations in the region,” said US Brig. Gen. James G. Champion.
The US military also said one American soldier died in a training accident involving explosives near Tarin Kot in the southern province of Kandahar. The death brought to six the number of US military personnel killed this month in Afghanistan, three of whom died in combat.
