KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, 20 June 2006 — Taleban militants killed 32 friends and relatives of an influential lawmaker in southern Afghanistan and 10 others are missing, the legislator said yesterday. MP Dad Mohammad Khan told AFP that 27 of the men had been killed in Helmand province when they had gone to the scene of an earlier attack in which five others were shot dead. “Yesterday morning in Taleban attacks, 32 of my relatives and friends were killed,” said Khan, the influential former intelligence chief of the province. “Ten relatives of mine are still missing and five are wounded,” he said.
One of the five men killed in the earlier ambush was a brother of Khan named Juma Gull, a former governor of Helmand’s Sangin district. The group had been returning from a visit to Ghorak district in neighboring Kandahar province. “Taleban attacked their vehicle and killed my brother, my son and three other people,” Khan said. “On hearing the news my other brother Gull Mohammad and other relatives rushed to the site of the incident. They were ambushed by Taleban again. Some of them were killed at the site, and some were killed in different locations.
“Today we have recovered 32 bodies of my family members, relatives and friends.” The incident was confirmed by deputy provincial governor, Mullah Amir Akhund. “A total of 30 people were killed in the two attacks in Sangin district yesterday, which includes two brothers of MP Dad Mohammad, one of his sons and the rest are mostly his relatives,” he said. “His other son and three more are wounded.”
A self-proclaimed Taleban spokesman said the movement was responsible for the attacks. “After the attack in which five people were killed, they started fighting Taleban. More than 30 of them were killed and a number were wounded,” spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi told AFP. Helmand is among several provinces in the south and east that have been hard-hit by an insurgency launched by the Taleban movement after it was removed from power in late 2001 by a US-led coalition.
Meanwhile, a government plan to arm men in insurgency-hit parts of Afghanistan to assist the understaffed police force could undermine a UN-backed disarmament program, the United Nations said yesterday. The government has said it will arm civilians to serve as “community police” in areas, including the south, that are worst hit by a bloody Taleban insurgency that has surged in recent months.
“What we need in the southern Afghanistan is more police and security forces,” said UN spokesman in Afghanistan, Aleem Siddique. “It remains to be seen if rearming groups in the south will achieve this. There is a risk that this could undermine the DIAG (Disbandment of Illegal Armed Groups) program,” he told reporters in Kabul.
