HERAT, Nov 7: A woman poet well-known in literary circles in Afghanistan’s western city of Herat has died after being severely beaten by her husband, who has been arrested, police said on Monday.

Nadia Anjuman, 25, died late Friday, said provincial police chief Nisar Ahmad Paikar.

“We have arrested her husband, accused of killing her,” Mr Paikar told AFP. The couple had a six-month-old daughter.

Her husband confessed to the beating but denied that he had killed Anjuman, he said.

“She was especially famous among the female poets in Herat,” said a lecturer at Herat University, Ahmad Sayeed Haqiqi.

The editor of the Itfaq-i-Islam daily newspaper, Naqib Arween, said Ms Anjuman had this year published a collection of her poems Gul-i-dodi, which means dark red flower.

The United Nations condemned the killing. “The death of Nadia Anjuman, as reported, is indeed tragic and a great loss to Afghanistan,” UN spokesman Adrian Edwards said at a media briefing.—AFP