| GEO World | | More than 1,000 Afghans protest Taliban killings | Updated at: 0728 PST, Saturday, October 25, 2008
KABUL: More than 1,000 demonstrators shouted anti-Taliban slogans in eastern Afghanistan to protest the slayings this week of 26 young men from their community by militants in the south.
The unprecedented demonstration Friday in the eastern Laghman province was one of the largest anti-Taliban gatherings since the fall of the hard-line Islamist regime following the U.S. invasion in late 2001.
On Sunday, Taliban militants stopped a bus in southern Kandahar province's Maiwand district, a militant-controlled area, and killed26 of the passengers beheading at least six of them. A Taliban spokesman said the men were targeted because they were members of Afghan security forces.
But Afghan officials disputed that any soldiers were on the bus, saying the Taliban insurgents had killed innocent civilians who were on their way to find jobs in neighboring Iran.
Hundreds of thousands of Afghans cross illegally into Iran every year, seeking jobs and refuge.
Protesters from Laghman's Alingar district where most of those killed came from shouted “Death to Taliban'' and “Death to killers'' in the provincial capital of Mehtar Lam. They waved black flags in a sign of mourning.
“They were innocent people, trying to find jobs, and they killed them,'' Abdul Wakil Attock, the spokesman for the provincial governor, said about the victims.
The protest in Laghman, a province next to Kabul, underscores the growing rivalry among Pashtuns, the dominant ethnic group in Afghanistan that also form the core of the Taliban fighters. |  |
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