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Taliban beheads 4 'US spies'
23/06/2006 13:33 - (SA)
Kandahar - Taliban militants beheaded four Afghans they accused of spying for the US military in southern Afghanistan, a local government official and the insurgent group said on Friday.
The beheaded corpses of the men were found on Thursday in Shajoy district of insurgency-hit Zabul province where the rebels launch almost daily attacks on US troops and government targets, the official said.
The men were kidnapped from their homes on Tuesday, local administration spokesperson Gulab Shah Alikhil said.
Two were found in one village and two in another.
Purported Taliban spokesperson Yousuf Ahmadi told AFP via satellite telephone that the movement had killed the men because they were spying "for the US military and (Afghan President Hamid) Karzai's government".
Insurgency
In another incident in the south, an off-duty policeman was killed in Helmand province's Grishk area on Thursday when his vehicle hit a roadside bomb as he was travelling to a picnic site, a provincial spokesman said.
The Taliban, whose regime was toppled by a US-led military coalition in late 2001, have been fighting an insurgency against the new government with the violence focussed in southern and eastern Afghanistan.
As part of their campaign the militants have carried out Iraq-style beheadings on Afghan security forces, foreign aid workers as well as civilians they have accused of spying.
On May 28 the bodies of three decapitated policemen were found in southern Helmand three days after they were kidnapped.
There are more than 20 000 US troops in Afghanistan, most of them part of a coalition force that is hunting down militants from the Taliban and other extremist groups such as al-Qaeda.
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