Taleban fighters claim to have massacred more than 30 passengers of a bus on the border of Helmand after claiming that the occupants were serving with the Afghan Security Forces.

Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, a Taleban spokesman, told The Times that more than 30 of up to 50 passengers captured by militants on Thursday had been executed following what he called “an inquiry” by militant commanders.

Police sources in nearby Kandahar said today that the bodies of six passengers were found near the scene. All had been beheaded. The remainder are still missing.

The Police Chief of Kandahar, General Matiullah Khan Qatah, said three buses were travelling in convoy near the town of Maiwand when militants attempted to stop them. Two escaped, he said but one was stopped and the passengers were abducted.

According to some reports, a man and a child were killed when Taleban fighters fired on one of the fleeing vehicles.

“We do not kill civilians. We have released ten of the passengers and the driver of the bus - they had documents to show they were civilians,” said Qari Yousuf Ahmadi.

“Taleban conducted an inquiry into the others. We have spoken to the families. Our inquiry established that most of the passengers were Afghan National Police from Laghman province who were going to Lashkargar to reinforce the governor’s residence. After the inquiry we have killed thirty of them. One policeman was a boy and he was below the justice limit of Sharia Law. He was released.”

Afghan government officials denied that the men on the bus were Afghan security personnel, or that Afghan security forces would travel on local buses in an area with little or no government control.

Daoud Ahmadi, a spokesman for the governor of Helmand, said that those killed were not soldiers or police. “These people who have been killed are all those people who were going from Kabul to Iran for work,” he said.

Taleban fighters have been gaining in strength around Lashkargar in recent weeks, and attacked the city on two occasions - losing considerable numbers of fighters on both occasions.

The security on roads in the south of Afghanistan has been the most obvious sign of the relentless deterioration in government control since 2006.

Taleban checkpoints are now routinely reported on the roads south of Kabul and across the south. Western and Afghan government forces travel in heavily armoured convoys that are attacked daily.

To add to the problems for Afghan civilian and commercial traffic, criminal gangs frequently prey on road users and Afghan police checkpoints in remote areas are also accused of subjecting local people to extortion, theft and even murder.

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