Captors release 10 Hazara Shias in Afghanistan
Gunmen have released 10 Shias belonging to Afghanistan’s Hazara community, whom they had recently abducted in the country’s eastern province of Ghazni, Press TV reports.
Fatemeh Rahimi of Ghazni’s Provincial Council said the Shias had been released thanks to mediation by local ethnic leaders.
The captives had been kidnapped from the province’s Qarabagh district and were being kept in Zabul Province, which is located to the south of Ghazni.
Zafar Sharif, the governor of Jaghuri district in Ghazni, said on Wednesday that the captives were all residents of the Hazara-majority area, and were traveling to the provincial capital, which is also called Ghazni.
The abduction came against a backdrop of rising attacks by the Taliban and other militants on members of the Persian-speaking Shia community.
Meanwhile Local officials announced Tuesday that they had recovered bodies of four men who were abducted last week in Ghazni’s Nawur district bordering Pakistan. They said the abductees were engineers working on a construction site in the area and three of them belonged to the Hazara community.
In February, masked gunmen kidnapped 30 Hazara men in Zabul Province, located south of Ghazni. The men were travelling by bus from Iran when they were seized. The gunmen took their money and phones before leaving them.
In April, four Hazara farmers were kidnapped in Ghazni Province as they were buying livestock in the local market. They were beheaded by the gunmen after local authorities rejected the kidnappers’ demands to release comrades of the militants who were held by the government.
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