.Taliban Say They Killed 4 Afghan Interpreters
KABUL, Afghanistan — A Taliban spokesman boasted on Saturday that the group had kidnapped and killed four Afghan interpreters, one on his wedding day, apparently because they worked for the United States military and a Western contractor.
The spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, reached by cellphone, confirmed accounts by villagers in Khost Province that the Taliban had kidnapped six members of a wedding party when they went to the Afghan-Pakistani border to escort the bride to the ceremony; she had been living in Pakistan. Mr. Mujahid said the Taliban found the four interpreters guilty of working as informers for “foreign forces” and executed them on Friday; the Taliban released the other two, he said.
General Nawab, an Afghan Army commander and the director of the Joint Coordination Center in Khost and who like many Afghan uses only one name, said the Taliban had killed the four men after abducting them from the wedding procession on Thursday night and taking them to Pakistan. Their bodies were found the next morning in the Spina Palla region, back on the Afghan side of the border.
Local villagers in the Alisher District of Khost Province identified the bodies and said that one of the dead, Lal Badshah, who worked as an interpreter at the coalition’s Forward Operating Base Salerno, was the groom. Two others, including Mr. Badshah’s brother, Yaqoot Shah, worked for the United States military, while the fourth victim worked for a construction company in Kabul.
Elsewhere in Afghanistan, five Afghan security guards escorting a fuel truck convoy on the main highway in eastern Ghazni Province were killed on Friday in an ambush by insurgents, according to a statement from the Interior Ministry.
In southern Afghanistan, two coalition helicopters that had been disabled were recovered Friday. One had a hard landing in Kandahar Province on Friday, causing injuries to several coalition and Afghan military personnel, according to a statement from NATO’s International Security Assistance Force. It was destroyed on the site by ISAF members, the military said, apparently to prevent it from falling into insurgents’ hands. The second helicopter was damaged on landing but no one was injured; members of ISAF tried to repair it despite harassing gunfire from insurgents but were unable to do so, the military said. Instead, it was lashed to the underside of another helicopter and lifted out of the area, ISAF said.
The military said both helicopters were damaged accidentally and not from enemy fire, disputing Taliban claims that they shot down helicopters in the area.
The Defense Department announced Saturday that an American soldier — Specialist Denis D. Kisseloff, 45, of St. Charles, Mo. — died at a coalition military base, Forward Operating Base Shank, in Logar Province just south of Kabul. He had been wounded when insurgents attacked his unit the day before using rocket-propelled grenades and small-caliber weapons.
On Friday, two ISAF soldiers were killed, one by a bomb in southern Afghanistan, and the other as the result of an insurgent attack in eastern Afghanistan, the military said. It did not release the nationalities of the victims except to indicate that they were not Americans.
NYT
The spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, reached by cellphone, confirmed accounts by villagers in Khost Province that the Taliban had kidnapped six members of a wedding party when they went to the Afghan-Pakistani border to escort the bride to the ceremony; she had been living in Pakistan. Mr. Mujahid said the Taliban found the four interpreters guilty of working as informers for “foreign forces” and executed them on Friday; the Taliban released the other two, he said.
General Nawab, an Afghan Army commander and the director of the Joint Coordination Center in Khost and who like many Afghan uses only one name, said the Taliban had killed the four men after abducting them from the wedding procession on Thursday night and taking them to Pakistan. Their bodies were found the next morning in the Spina Palla region, back on the Afghan side of the border.
Local villagers in the Alisher District of Khost Province identified the bodies and said that one of the dead, Lal Badshah, who worked as an interpreter at the coalition’s Forward Operating Base Salerno, was the groom. Two others, including Mr. Badshah’s brother, Yaqoot Shah, worked for the United States military, while the fourth victim worked for a construction company in Kabul.
Elsewhere in Afghanistan, five Afghan security guards escorting a fuel truck convoy on the main highway in eastern Ghazni Province were killed on Friday in an ambush by insurgents, according to a statement from the Interior Ministry.
In southern Afghanistan, two coalition helicopters that had been disabled were recovered Friday. One had a hard landing in Kandahar Province on Friday, causing injuries to several coalition and Afghan military personnel, according to a statement from NATO’s International Security Assistance Force. It was destroyed on the site by ISAF members, the military said, apparently to prevent it from falling into insurgents’ hands. The second helicopter was damaged on landing but no one was injured; members of ISAF tried to repair it despite harassing gunfire from insurgents but were unable to do so, the military said. Instead, it was lashed to the underside of another helicopter and lifted out of the area, ISAF said.
The military said both helicopters were damaged accidentally and not from enemy fire, disputing Taliban claims that they shot down helicopters in the area.
The Defense Department announced Saturday that an American soldier — Specialist Denis D. Kisseloff, 45, of St. Charles, Mo. — died at a coalition military base, Forward Operating Base Shank, in Logar Province just south of Kabul. He had been wounded when insurgents attacked his unit the day before using rocket-propelled grenades and small-caliber weapons.
On Friday, two ISAF soldiers were killed, one by a bomb in southern Afghanistan, and the other as the result of an insurgent attack in eastern Afghanistan, the military said. It did not release the nationalities of the victims except to indicate that they were not Americans.
NYT
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