KABUL, 11 July 2005 — The decapitated bodies of six Afghan policemen were found in southern Afghanistan at the weekend, on the same day Taleban guerrillas claimed to have beheaded a missing US commando, officials said yesterday. The bodies and heads of the policemen, who had been abducted by Taleban guerrillas on Friday, were found dumped in Deshu district of Helmand province on Saturday, provincial Governor Sher Mohammad Akhundzada said.
“Six policemen were beheaded yesterday, it was a very brutal act,” he told Reuters, adding that government forces were searching for the guerrillas responsible. The policemen were kidnapped in a Taleban ambush on Friday in which four colleagues were killed and three wounded, Akhundzada said, while denying reports quoting him as saying that 10 officers had been found beheaded.
The bodies were found the same day Taleban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi said the guerrillas had beheaded a missing American commando in the eastern province of Kunar. The guerrillas claimed to have captured the commando last month.
US military spokeswoman Lt. Cindy Moore said she had no information to confirm the Taleban claim that the missing commando had been killed, or had been captured, and a search for him was continuing in Kunar. “We are always hopeful,” she said. Hakimi confirmed the killings of the policemen, but could not say if they were beheaded. He said anyone supporting the US-backed government faced death.
Interior Minster Ali Ahmad Jalali told a news conference those responsible could not be considered Muslims. “They are not even human beings because it is against Islam and humanity,” he said. Elsewhere yesterday, security forces killed three Taleban guerrillas near the town of Spin Boldak on the border with Pakistan, chief local official Abdul Khaliq Halim said.
And in Kabul, a rocket exploded on a roadside about 500 meters from the heavily fortified compounds of the US Embassy and the NATO-led peacekeeping force early on Sunday. It caused some damage to the wall of a house, but no casualties.
A spokeswoman for the peacekeepers said it was not known who fired the 107mm rocket, but Hakimi told the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press the guerrillas had fired four, aimed at the presidential palace and the US Embassy. Rockets have occasionally exploded in Kabul since the Taleban’s overthrow but have rarely caused damage or casualties.
Hundreds of people have been killed, many of them guerrillas, since the Taleban and their militant allies stepped up violence in March ahead of Sept. 18 parliamentary elections, the next big step in Afghanistan’s difficult path to stability.
