Here at a former battlefield outside Kabul, at least half of 30 dead fighters that the the International Committee of the Red Cross found on Sunday had been shot in the head, officials close to the investigation of the deaths said.
The dead came into Afghanistan from places like Pakistan and Arab nations to fight for the Taliban, the officials said. The Northern Alliance, which took this area from the Taliban last week, particularly loathes those foreign volunteers.
The fighting took place as Taliban forces retreated from this village, which is outside Kabul and near the strategic Bagram air base.
Four of the dead appeared to have been executed, with one shot between the eyes and one apparently shot in the side of the head. At least one other had been decapitated.
The discovery came during the first day that officials from the Red Cross began removing the remains of Taliban soldiers from the front-line trenches that the soldiers of the Northern Alliance swept through last week. The Red Cross, by longstanding custom, does not discuss the nature of wartime killings. The full extent of the killings across Afghanistan will not be known for weeks. Pierre-Andre Junod, a Red Cross official in Kabul, said roughly 70 bodies had been found in the Kabul and Bagram areas. In the city of Mazar-e-Sharif in northern Afghanistan, where executions had been reported, 300 bodies have been recovered, he said. Both of these efforts are continuing.
During the Northern Alliance attack here, the execution of one prisoner was witnessed by journalists, and the bodies of three men shot in the head were also discovered. One body appeared to have been pulled from a ditch onto a roadside and set on fire.
Northern Alliance soldiers denied shooting any prisoners and said a rocket was responsible for the decapitation of the Taliban soldier. Officials familiar with the investigation cautioned that the Taliban soldiers could have been shot in the head by passing soldiers after they were dead. But one official said executions might have happened in revenge.
Taliban forces won control of this village and others in the Shamali Plain area in 1999, and systematically executed citizens and burned their crops.
"When they took the Shamali Plain, they burned everything," the official said. "They took revenge."
How many of the deaths were due to execution and how many may have been caused by battlefield injuries may never be known. Junod said the Red Cross, to maintain neutrality, would not detail the nature of the killings. He said the organization was collecting the bodies for humanitarian reasons.
"These bodies must be buried in a dignified way," Junod said. "Afghans are probably taken by their families. But most of the foreigners have no one to take their bodies."
The dead soldiers appeared to be from a group of volunteers from Arab countries and neighboring Pakistan who were surrounded in the village after most Afghan Taliban fighters defected.
Esham, a Northern Alliance commander who led 50 men in the attack, said the Arabs and Pakistanis were killed because they refused to give up. "We told them to please surrender," he said.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique