Taliban hangs mother and son they claim were spies

SUSPECTED Taliban militants hanged an old woman and her son from a tree in southern Afghanistan, after accusing them of spying for the Government.

The 70-year-old woman and her 30-year-old son, were killed yesterday in the village of Daigh, eight kilometres north of Musa Qala town of the southern Helmand province, said Amir Mohammad Akhunzada, the province’s deputy governor.

Mr Akhunzada did not identify the two, but said that the woman’s son-in-law worked for the police in the district.

After the killing, the militants threatened to kill anyone working for the Government in the insurgency wracked southern Afghanistan, Mr Akhunzada said.

“This hanging is against Islam,” Mr Akhunzada said. “They use the name of Islam to go against Islam.”

The Taliban have stepped up attacks in southern Afghanistan this year. More than 900 people have died in violence since May, mostly militants killed in fighting with security forces.

The violence, the deadliest since the Taliban regime’s ousting in late 2001, has underscored the weak grip of US-backed President Hamid Karzai’s Government, particularly in the volatile south and east of the country.

Meanwhile, in the north-west of Afghanistan, some 400 militants were involved in clashes on Monday in the Pashtun Kot district of Faryab province between forces loyal to rival ethnic Uzbek warlords, Abdul Rashid Dostum and Abdul Malik, said General Taj Mohammad, the Afghan National Army commander in northern Afghanistan.

Gen Dostum is the current chief of staff of the Afghan Army’s High Command.

At least one civilian was among the four people killed and hundreds of others fled the fighting, Gen Mohammad said.