The #Taliban are “looking into” a video circulating on social media that appears to show its fighters executing captured members of an Afghan insurgent group, a government spokesman says.https://t.co/HTCrqIsvBH
— Al Arabiya English (@AlArabiya_Eng) September 14, 2022
The National Resistance® Front (NRF), a nascent group operating mainly out of the Panjshir Valley, said the video showed some of its fighters being executed, and accused the Taliban
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of "war crimes."
The video, being shared widely on social media, shows two groups of men squatting on a hillside with their hands tied behind their backs before being shot with automatic rifles by Taliban fighters.
The fighters can be heard shouting "Allahu Akbar," and a man is later heard saying "stop it, stop it" after the captives slump forward, apparently dead.
Checks by AFP’s digital verification team show the first versions of the video only appeared online in the last 24 hours, and government front man Bilal Karimi said authorities were investigating.
"We are looking into it to know exactly when these videos were filmed and to know whether they are old," Karimi told AFP.
"But so far, we absolutely don’t know about the place, timing of the videos, or who the people in them are."
The footage went viral a day after the Taliban said its forces had killed at least 40 NRF fighters in festivities in the Panjshir Valley.
The NRF said those shown being executed in the video were captured during fighting in the valley.
"The criminal Taliban... committed a war crime again by shooting & martyring eight" members of the NRF, the holy warrior group’s front man Sibghatullah Ahmadi said on Twitter.
The scenic Panjshir Valley is famed for being the center of Afghan resistance to the Soviet occupation of the 1980s and the Taliban’s first stint in power in the late 1990s.
It was the last part of Afghanistan to hold out against the Taliban when they returned to power in August last year.
The NRF is headed by Ahmad Massoud, the son of legendary anti-Soviet and anti-Taliban fighter Ahmad Shah Massoud.
The elder Massoud, known as the Lion of Panjshir, was assassinated in 2001 by al-Qaeda, two days before the September 11 attacks in the US.
His son has since picked up the mantle against Taliban forces, repeatedly denouncing the Islamist regime as "illegitimate".
In July, the United Nations
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mission in Afghanistan accused the Taliban of carrying out hundreds of human rights
...which are often intentionally defined so widely as to be meaningless...
violations, including extra-judicial killings and torture, since they seized power.
Many of the victims were former government officials and national security force members, the mission said, an accusation denied by the Taliban.
Related:
National Resistance Front: 2022-09-06 Daily Evacuation Brief September 6, 2022
National Resistance Front: 2022-08-22 Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid stated that Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada, the group’s supreme leader, has appointed a special military commander for Panjshir province
National Resistance Front: 2022-08-21 In Takhar, four Taliban killed by Resistance Front forces
National Resistance Front: 2022-09-06 Daily Evacuation Brief September 6, 2022
National Resistance Front: 2022-08-22 Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid stated that Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada, the group’s supreme leader, has appointed a special military commander for Panjshir province
National Resistance Front: 2022-08-21 In Takhar, four Taliban killed by Resistance Front forces