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Taliban Deny Civilian Massacres, Slam Rights Groups
KABUL, Feb 19 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia on Monday angrily dismissed a U.S.-based human rights group's allegations that some 300 civilians were massacred following recent battles in central Bamiyan province.
A report released Monday in Washington by Human Rights Watch gave graphic detail of the killings of about 300 ethnic Hazara civilians in Bamiyan's western Yakawlang district early last month.
It said Taliban soldiers also executed at least 31 Hazara prisoners, 26 identified as civilians, in May last year near the border between Baghlan and Samangan provinces in north central Afghanistan.
"These organizations are collecting baseless and incorrect reports from spiteful sources and from the opposition, which are void of any truth," the Taliban's foreign ministry said in a statement. "The Islamic Emirate [Taliban] ruled Bamiyan for more than two and a half years without any complaint raised by any body or any source."
U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan last month cited "credible reports" that more than 100 villagers had been massacred around Yakawlang, the scene of fierce fighting between the Taliban and armed Shiite groups recently.
Human Rights Watch supplemented its findings with photographic evidence and a list of the victims, and urged the United Nations to investigate. "A prompt and thorough investigation could deter further killings of Afghan civilians," said Sidney Jones, the group's director for Asia.
"The U.N. so far has failed to systematically document and pursue accountability for abuses in Afghanistan." U.N. officials based in neighboring Pakistan said they could not immediately comment on the Human Rights Watch report, but quoted U.N. human rights chief Mary Robinson as calling for an independent investigation.
The alleged massacre at Yakawlang began on January 8th and continued for four days, according to Human Rights Watch. It said Taliban forces, searching for opposition loyalists, rounded up about 300 civilian adult males, including staff members of local humanitarian organizations.
"The men were herded to assembly points in the center of the district and several outlying areas, and then shot by firing squad in public views," it said. The largest pile of bodies was seen in the village of Qala Arbab Hassan in Yakawlang.
The area near the Robatak pass between Baghlan and Samangan had as many as three gravesites containing 31 corpses. The dead men had been tortured and abused in Taliban detention for four months prior to their execution, the report said.
"The bodies were lying on the ground face down," said an unidentified worker who had been summoned by authorities to bury the dead. "They were tied together in groups of three using their turbans and scarves which had been wound together to make ropes."
On at least two occasions, Taliban soldiers executed delegations of Hazara elders who had came to discuss the security situation in Yakawlang, the report said. Hazaras are part of Afghanistan's Shiite Muslim minority, which is generally disliked by the country's mostly Sunni ethnic groups, news agencies said.
"We once again turn down the baseless allegations that more than 100 civilians were killed in Yakawlang of Bamiyan province by the Islamic Emirate Army. If anybody was killed, they might have been combatants," the Taliban said.
A Taliban official also dismissed video footage of recently exhumed mass graves, showing partly decomposed bodies wrapped in cloth, as old shots of casualties from opposition infighting.
"The film is old and fake. It is a product of their own internal differences," said the chief of the official Bakhtar news agency.
Carried internationally on the BBC, the Human Rights Watch footage included interviews with villagers who said they had survived massacres, as well as grieving relatives who were trying to retrieve bodies for proper burial.
The Taliban said opposition groups killed "dozens" of civilians in Bamiyan city last week during their brief occupation. Opposition Shiite groups seized Yakawlang earlier this month before attacking and capturing Bamiyan last week. They were driven from the city in a Taliban counter-attack on Saturday.
Taliban's Bakhtar news agency chief Abdul Manan Hemat said the religious militia fighters were ready to attack opposition Hezb-e-Wahdat supporters in Shaheedan region on Bamiyan's outskirts.
"The fighting is going to start with the aim of taking all the lost areas," he said. "Sufficient number of reinforcements have been sent to Bamiyan for the job."
Hemat said three helicopter gunships were standing by at the Bamiyan airstrip to assist the Taliban ground operations.
Bamiyan is crucial to the Taliban as it provides the quickest alternative route to the militia-held northern provinces while the main highway through the Salang tunnel atop the Hindu Kush range remains closed by the opposition.
This is the fourth time Bamiyan, the heart of Hazarajat, inhabited mostly by the ethnic Hazara minority, has changed hands in two years.
Hemat said the opposition was never in a position to hold on to Bamiyan. "They cannot hold it because they do not have enough men and the necessary morale."
The U.N. has warned that continued fighting would worsen Afghanistan's humanitarian crisis triggered by drought and war. More than 500,000 people have been displaced from their homes across the impoverished country since the middle of last year.
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