Kabul : Taliban A government spokesman said on Wednesday it was investigating a video circulating on social media that showed its fighters killing captured members of an Afghan insurgent group.
National Resistance Front ,NRF), a neonatal group that operates mainly from Panjshir Valleysaid the video showed some of its fighters being killed, and accused the Taliban of “war crimes”.
In a video being widely shared on social media, two groups of men with their backs tied behind their backs are shown sitting on a hill before being shot by Taliban fighters with automatic rifles.
Fighters can be heard shouting “Allahu Akbar”, and later a man is heard saying “Stop this, stop it” when the captives lean forward, apparently dead.
An investigation by AFP’s digital verification team shows that earlier versions of the video only appeared online in the last 24 hours, and government spokesman Bilal Karimi Said officials are investigating.
“We are looking to find out when these videos were filmed and whether they are out of date,” Karimi told AFP.
“But as of now, we don’t know exactly the location, timing or who the people in the videos are.”
The footage went viral a day after the Taliban said that its forces had killed at least 40 NRF fighters in clashes in the Panjshir Valley.
The NRF said that those killed in the video were caught during fighting in the Valley.
The insurgent group’s spokesman, NRF members “re-committed a war crime by the criminal Taliban by shooting and martyring eight men”. Sibgatullah Ahmadi said on Twitter.
The Sundar Panjshir Valley is famous for being the center of Afghan resistance to the Soviet occupation of the 1980s and the Taliban’s first term in power in the late 1990s.
It was Afghanistan’s last battle against the Taliban when they returned to power in August last year.
NRF is headed by Ahmadis MasoodSon of the great anti-Soviet and anti-Taliban fighter Ahmed Shah Masoodi,
Bade Masood, known as the Lion of Panjshir, was assassinated by al-Qaeda in 2001, two days before the September 11 attacks in the United States.
Her son has since taken the lead against Taliban forces, repeatedly denouncing the Islamic regime as “illegitimate”.
In July, United Nations The mission in Afghanistan accused the Taliban of hundreds of human rights violations, including extrajudicial killings and torture, since seizing power.
Many of the victims were former government officials and members of the National Security Force, the mission said, a charge the Taliban denied.
National Resistance Front ,NRF), a neonatal group that operates mainly from Panjshir Valleysaid the video showed some of its fighters being killed, and accused the Taliban of “war crimes”.
In a video being widely shared on social media, two groups of men with their backs tied behind their backs are shown sitting on a hill before being shot by Taliban fighters with automatic rifles.
Fighters can be heard shouting “Allahu Akbar”, and later a man is heard saying “Stop this, stop it” when the captives lean forward, apparently dead.
An investigation by AFP’s digital verification team shows that earlier versions of the video only appeared online in the last 24 hours, and government spokesman Bilal Karimi Said officials are investigating.
“We are looking to find out when these videos were filmed and whether they are out of date,” Karimi told AFP.
“But as of now, we don’t know exactly the location, timing or who the people in the videos are.”
The footage went viral a day after the Taliban said that its forces had killed at least 40 NRF fighters in clashes in the Panjshir Valley.
The NRF said that those killed in the video were caught during fighting in the Valley.
The insurgent group’s spokesman, NRF members “re-committed a war crime by the criminal Taliban by shooting and martyring eight men”. Sibgatullah Ahmadi said on Twitter.
The Sundar Panjshir Valley is famous for being the center of Afghan resistance to the Soviet occupation of the 1980s and the Taliban’s first term in power in the late 1990s.
It was Afghanistan’s last battle against the Taliban when they returned to power in August last year.
NRF is headed by Ahmadis MasoodSon of the great anti-Soviet and anti-Taliban fighter Ahmed Shah Masoodi,
Bade Masood, known as the Lion of Panjshir, was assassinated by al-Qaeda in 2001, two days before the September 11 attacks in the United States.
Her son has since taken the lead against Taliban forces, repeatedly denouncing the Islamic regime as “illegitimate”.
In July, United Nations The mission in Afghanistan accused the Taliban of hundreds of human rights violations, including extrajudicial killings and torture, since seizing power.
Many of the victims were former government officials and members of the National Security Force, the mission said, a charge the Taliban denied.