KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN — Taliban militants tortured five abducted policemen in southern Afghanistan and hung their mutilated bodies from trees in a warning to villagers against working with the government, officials said Sunday.
Meanwhile, officials said that recent violence and clashes had left at least 63 other people dead across Afghanistan.
The officers were abducted two months ago from a checkpoint in southern Uruzgan province, said Juma Gul Himat, the provincial police chief. The Taliban slashed hands and legs and hung the bodies on trees Saturday in Gazak village of Derawud district, he said.
“The Taliban told the people that whoever works with the government will suffer the same fate as these policemen,” Himat said. “This village is under Taliban control. There are more than 100 Taliban in this village.”
Insurgency-related violence in Afghanistan has soared this year, killing more than 6,000 people, a record number, according to an Associated Press count based on figures from Western and Afghan officials.
The executions followed several days of violence in the south that left at least 63 people dead, including 58 militants and two Canadian soldiers.
Also in Uruzgan, police shot and killed two suspected Taliban militants Sunday as they approached a police checkpoint on a motorbike, Himat said.
In Zabul province, the Taliban ambushed and clashed with an Afghan army patrol Saturday night, leaving 11 suspected insurgents dead and four soldiers wounded, said Qasem Khan, a provincial police official.
In southern Helmand province, a suicide bomber attacked a NATO patrol Sunday in Gereshk district, damaging a vehicle but causing no casualties, said provincial police chief Mohammad Hussein Andiwal.
Elsewhere, 23 Taliban militants were killed during a U.S.-led coalition operation Thursday aimed at disrupting a weapons transfer in southern Afghanistan, the coalition said.
