GHAZNI/KABUL: Suspected Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan killed 12 people after stopping their vehicles on a road in the east of the country, while 50 people were kidnapped in the north, the latest in a spate of highway attacks, officials said on Wednesday.

Attackers in the eastern province of Ghazni stopped two cars late on Tuesday and shot dead everyone they found. Several members of the security forces were among those killed, said Jawid Salangi a spokesman for the provincial governor.

“Taliban ordered the passengers out and brutally shot them dead,” Salangi said.

Villagers later found 12 bodies, he said.

Gulam Mohammad Tahiri of the Afgan Army’s 203 Corps, however, said the hostages were captured in recent ambushes and they included policemen and soldiers.

“All 12 had been abducted from their vehicles after being ambushed at different times this month as they drove along a major highway,” he said.

The dead included seven policemen, three soldiers and two officials with the national spy agency, Tahiri said, adding that the killings took place on Tuesday in the province’s Andar district where the Taliban conducted what he described as a “ceremony” and forced local people to watch the killings.

“They also invited other groups of Taliban to see the shootings, so there were about 250 Taliban present,” he said. The abductions took place at different times on the highway linking Paktika province, which borders Pakistan, and the Afghan capital, Kabul, he said.

On Wednesday, suspected Taliban stopped a bus and a car near the northern city of Kunduz and took all 50 people in the vehicles hostage, a police spokesman in the area, Mahfozullah Akbari, said.

“We are putting all our efforts into freeing them as soon as we can,” he said. The provincial police chief’s spokesman, Hejratullah Ackbary, blamed the Taliban. At least 10 of the passengers were later found safe, said Kunduz governor’s spokesman, Mahmood Danish. He said all others remain held. Taliban-linked insurgents killed at least nine people last month after kidnapping passengers off buses in the same region.

Travellers have faced a string of murders and kidnappings on roads in recent weeks.

Insurgents killed at least nine people and kidnapped 20 when they held up three buses in Kunduz late last month. The Taliban claimed responsibility for that kidnapping.Taliban gunmen are increasingly staging ambushes on provincial highways and main roads in their war — now in its 15th year — to overthrow the Kabul government.

Elsewhere in the south, four policemen were killed and two were abducted by insurgents late on Tuesday in Uruzgan province, where the Taliban have become increasingly active, an official said.

The governor of the Gizab district, Abdullah Jan, said the insurgents had attacked police checkpoints. A Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility for the incident.

The Taliban have made considerable gains in fighting in various parts of the country in recent months and the killing of their leader, Mullah Akhtar Mansour, in a US drone attack last month has had no discernable impact on the violence.

Published in Dawn, June 9th, 2016