Militants from the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group have beheaded three brothers in Afghanistan’s eastern province of Nangarhar, local officials say.
Attaullah Khogyani, spokesperson for the governor of Nangarhar, said on Monday that the young men were taken from their home and killed by Daesh terrorists in Chaparhar district on Sunday night.
"Their bodies were found in Chaparhar district where they lived," Khogyani added.
Two of the brothers recently graduated from medical school and the third was still at university, the spokesman noted. The father of the victims, a doctor, was also beheaded last year by Daesh.
Provincial police spokesman Hazrat Hussain Mashreqiwal confirmed the latest brutal murders, saying, "They were taken out of their house by armed men and their beheaded bodies were found by villagers near their house."
In recent years, Daesh has established a foothold in eastern and northern Afghanistan. The terrorist group has mostly been populating Nangarhar, from where it has carried out high-profile brutal attacks at major population centers across the country.
On Sunday, the terrorist group claimed an attack in a large crowd outside a voter registration center in the capital’s Dasht-e-Barchi area that killed 57 people and wounded more than 100 others. The neighborhood in western Kabul is mainly inhabited by members of the Muslim Shia Hazara minority, who have been targeted regularly by both Daesh and the Taliban.
According to Afghan intelligence documents, Daesh is present in nine provinces from Nangarhar and Kunar in the east to Jawzjan, Faryab, and Badakhshan in the north and Ghor in the central west.
In November last year, former Afghan president Hamid Karzai said the United States was colluding with Daesh in Afghanistan and allowing the Takfiri group to flourish in the war-stricken country.
The US and its allies invaded Afghanistan and toppled a ruling Taliban regime some 17 years ago. That ongoing war has failed to bring stability to the country despite the presence of thousands of foreign forces. Daesh, too, has more recently gained a foothold in Afghanistan.