By Kim Sengupta
The Independent UK

Taliban fighters hanged three men in Afghanistan yesterday after accusing them of collaborating with British troops, while four children were killed in a suicide bomb attack.

In further violence across the country over the weekend, eight policemen died in two separate ambushes amid increasing evidence of Taliban activities after a winter lull.

The three “spies” were killed in the Musa Qala region, where the British had arranged a local deal – which had since collapsed – under which tribal leaders pledged to keep insurgents out in return for the withdrawal of Nato forces.

Two of the men were hanged from a tree in front of a crowd in a village between Musa Qala and Gereshk, and the third was hanged in the main street in Musa Qala. The Taliban said they had been killed for supplying information to the enemy. A local Taliban commander, Nizamuddin Khan, said: “They were spying for the British troops and had tipped them off about the location of one of our commanders, who was killed by an air strike. The men had confessed to their crimes.”

Namatullah, a resident of Musa Qala, said: “The Taliban told us that whoever gives information to the government or the foreign soldiers will be punished in the same way as these informers. The body of the man here was left hanging from a tree for three hours. It was then taken down and buried by local people.”

At Gereshk, where there had also been an informal truce between the British and tribal chiefs, the hanging took place near a bridge. A local man, Syed Gul, said: “This was a warning. We were told that this is what would happen to anyone who betrays his own people to the British. There has been a lot of fighting here in the past, and we think that will happen again.”

The children were killed when a bomber detonated his car packed with explosives at Mehtarlam, in Laghman province, near an Afghan army convoy. Yar Mohammed, a senior police officer, said: “It was a suicide attack and unfortunately it was children who were the victims. There were some injuries and they, too, were civilians.”

The Taliban would not immediately confirm whether they had carried out the attack, but one commander, Mullah Abdul Qasim, reiterated that the policy of “executing traitors” will continue.

It is believed that the Taliban commander killed in the Nato air raid was Mullah Abdul Manan, who had been travelling in a convoy when the attack took place.

Nato said at the time that Manan, said to be the insurgent chief in Helmand, had been responsible for the Taliban taking over Musa Qala, thus ending the controversial and precarious agreement, a few weeks before his death. He was also accused of organising attacks on Royal Marines attempting to organise a secure zone around a USAID-funded dam project at Kajaki.

Manan, in his mid 30s, became the governor of Samagan, a northern province, and a trusted lieutenant of Mullah Omar under the Taliban regime. Manan, who Afghan officials claim had ties with the Pakistani secret police, was arrested in Pakistan after pressure from the UK and US, but was subsequently freed and travelled to Helmand.

Meanwhile, there were unconfirmed reports that 2,000 Uzbek tribesmen linked to al-Qa’ida were preparing to move from their refuge in Pakistan into Afghanistan. The fighters, led by Tahir Yuklashev, had been involved in clashes with Pakistani tribesmen in Waziristan. According to local reports, one solution being proposed is that they should leave the area and join the jihad across the Afghan border.
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