Protesters gathered in west Kabul and walked through the rain bearing the coffins hung in green to the entryways of the presidential house, where coordinators said they were wanting to organize a sit-in until their requests were met by the government.
Advertisement
Mullah Mansoor Dadullah, a senior Taliban commander and one of the opponents of new Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansoor, has been killed in a clash in southern Afghanistan, officials said on Thursday.
Most of Wednesday’s protests were peaceful, but a few demonstrators tried to scale the walls of a building near the president’s palace, forcing police to fire warning shots, Reuters reported. News reports said several were wounded.
Afghan protesters carry a coffin containing a decapitated body of one of seven Shiite Muslim Hazaras, including four men, two women and one child, during a demonstration in Kabul.. A few of the dead had their throats slit – it is not clear by whom. Ghani had sent a delegation to Ghazni to investigate the killings, his office said, describing the abductors as “mainly non-local terrorists”.
Afghanistan is gripped by insecurity 14 years after the United States and its allies attacked the country as part of Washington’s so-called war on terror.
“These senseless murders may amount to war crimes and the perpetrators must be held accountable”, he said.
This would make it the biggest demonstration in Kabul since the killing of a young woman, Farkhunda, by a mob in March.
Ghani’s national unity government has come under increasing pressure to address parliament on the worsening security situation. The horrific act was committed as conflict between two rival Taliban factions escalated.
Dadullah’s dissident Taliban group denied any connection with Islamic State and said Mansour was being funded from Iran.
While it first gained a foothold in Syria and Iraq, ISIS has also been growing in Afghanistan, with the head of US forces in that country saying it has between 1,000 and 3,000 active members in the Asian nation.
Many IMU followers in Afghanistan, including those in Zabul, have declared loyalty to the ISIL group, officials have said.
They had been kidnapped in neighboring Ghazni province up to six months earlier.
The protesters chanted against both the Taliban and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on the march, believing that the government is not doing enough to protect the public from such murders.
“Our voice wants justice, brotherhood, sanctity of life, peace and equality”, he said.
Advertisement
Finally, we have seen how Afghan civil society groups and youth leaders, utilising social media networks, are capable of mobilising large segments of our society to stand together and seek justice for our fellow countrymen.
