Taliban Militants Kill 30 After Stopping Bus!!!!!!!

by **J The Kidd** Sun Oct 19, 2008 10:20 pm

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Taliban militants stopped a bus traveling on
Afghanistan's main highway through a dangerous part of the country's
south, seized about 50 people on board and killed around 30 of them,
officials said Sunday.

A Taliban spokesman took responsibility for the attack but claimed
to have killed 27 Afghan army soldiers. Afghan officials said no
soldiers were aboard and all the victims were civilians.

Militants stopped the bus traveling in a two-bus convoy in a
Taliban-controlled area about 40 miles west of Kandahar, said
provincial police chief Matiullah Khan.

He said two buses had been traveling together, and the militants had
tried to stop the first one but failed. He said the insurgents fired at
the first bus, killing a child on board.

Officials offered varying death tolls from the attack, which occurred
in an area where government forces cannot travel safely without heavy
military protection. That may explain why news of Thursday's killings
did not emerge until Sunday.

Some of the dead beheaded
The Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman, Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi, said
31 people were killed and that six of the dead were beheaded in a
separate area from where the other 25 bodies were found.

Khan originally claimed about 40 civilians were killed but later
Sunday, he lowered the death toll telling a news conference 24 people
had been killed. He said the victims had come from northern Afghanistan
and were between 20 and 25 years old.

Khan said authorities had arrested four Taliban commanders in connection with the attack.

There was no way to independently verify the number of victims.

"The Taliban want to hide the news that they arrested and killed
innocent Afghan civilians," Khan said, dismissing their claim the
victims were soldiers.

Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi said militants looked at the
documents of those traveling on the bus, released all the civilians and
killed only soldiers.

Taliban attacks have become increasingly lethal this year, as the
militia has gained power and surged throughout southern and eastern
Afghanistan. Violence in Afghanistan this year has killed more than
5,100 people — mostly militants — according to an Associated Press
count of figures from Afghan and Western officials.