The Taliban “looked into” a video circulating on social media that seems to show its fighters to execute members of the Afghan rebel group, a spokesman for the government Wednesday.
National Resistance Front (NRF), a newborn group that operates, especially outside the Panjshir Valley, said the video shows some of his fighters of being executed, and accusing the Taliban of “War Crimes”.
The video, which was widely shared on social media, showed two groups of men squatting on the hillside with hands tied behind them before being shot with automatic rifles by the Taliban fighters.
The warriors could be heard shouting “Allahu Akbar”, and a man then heard said “Stop, Stop” after the prisoners dropped forward, seemed to die.
Check by the AFP digital verification team showing the first version of the video that only appeared online in the last 24 hours, and the government spokesman Bilal Karimi said the authorities were investigating.
“We find out exactly when this video is filmed and knows if they are old,” Karimi told AFP.
“But so far, we really don’t know about the place, video time, or who are the people in it.”
The recording became viral the day after the Taliban said his troops had killed at least 40 NRF fighters in clashes in the Panjshir Valley.
NRF said those displayed were executed in the video were arrested during the battle in the valley.
“Criminal Taliban … committing war again by shooting & Martyring eight” NRF members, said spokesman for the rebel group Sibghatullah Ahmadi on Twitter.
‘Summary executions’
A UN expert on human rights expressed concern over the latest situation in Panjshir.
“Very concerned about the latest accusations about the execution of a summary outside the law in Panjshir,” Richard Bennett, a special Reporter of the United Nations about the Situation of Human Rights in Afghanistan, said on Twitter.
“I called for a thorough investigation and so that the perpetrators must be held accountable.”
In July, the UN assistance mission in Afghanistan (Unama) accused the Taliban of committing hundreds of human rights violations, including murder and torture outside of the law, because they seized power.
Many victims were former government officials and members of the national security forces, said the mission, an accusation that was rejected by the Taliban.
The beautiful Panjshir Valley is famous for being the center of Afghan’s resistance to the Soviet occupation of the 1980s and the first task of the Taliban in power in the late 1990s.
It was the last part of Afghanistan who survived against the Taliban when they returned to power in August last year.
The NRF was led by Ahmad Massoud, son of an anti-superviet and anti-taliban fighter Ahmad Shah Massoud.
Elder Massoud, known as Lion Panjshir, was killed in 2001 by Al-Qaeda, two days before the September 11 attack in the United States.
His son since then took a coat against the Taliban troops, repeatedly criticizing the Islamic regime as “invalid”.