A group of armed Taliban militants intercepted three passenger buses and kidnapped 185 travellers, said the police.
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The chance of peace talks revived again, if only briefly, last month when a USA drone strike in Pakistan killed the Taliban’s leader, Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour. He said police forces were attempting to defuse the vehicle.
The Taliban had taken responsibility for a separate attack earlier in the day in which men disguised in women’s burqas and wearing military uniforms underneath stormed a courthouse in Ghazni province, southwest of Kabul.
The drone attack, the first known American assault on a top Afghan Taliban leader on Pakistani soil, sent shockwaves through the insurgent movement, which had seen a resurgence under Mansour.
Gunmen have kidnapped 17 members of Afghanistan’s Hazara community, officials said on Thursday, the latest incident involving members of the Shi’ite Muslim minority highlighting the risk of sectarian violence.
The militants had vowed revenge for the hanging on May 8 of six Taliban prisoners convicted of terrorism offences, as part of a tougher security policy in retaliation for an April suicide attack in Kabul in which 64 people were killed. All the three insurgents were killed, Amarkhil asserted.
The men were abducted on Wednesday afternoon from a bus in the northern province of Sar-i-Pul, with officials blaming Taliban militants.
“Four attackers entered the court compound after killing the guard”, provincial police chief Aminullah Amarkhail told AFP.
The newly-appointed leader of the terror group was elevated to the position after a United States drone strike killed Mullah Akhtar Mohammed Mansour and it was believed that under Akhunddzada, the group will follow the policies espoused by founder Mullah Omar, who died in Pakistan in 2013.
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With prospects for peace talks increasingly remote, Army Lt. Gen. John W. Nicholson Jr.is wrapping up his recommendations on whether to continue troop withdrawals this year, a USA military spokesman in Kabul said Wednesday.
