Taliban Is Said To Kill 20 Civilians In Panjshir Valley, Afghan Ambassador Urges UN To Hands Down

The Taliban group poses for a photo at the gates of the governor's office complex of Panjshir Province. (Twitter/@Ahmadmuttaqi01)

JAKARTA - The Taliban is said to have killed 20 civilians in Afghanistan's Panjshir Valley, with the killing of a uniformed man caught on video, where the area is a stronghold for anti-Taliban opposition fighting.

Quoting the BBC's The Guardian on September 14, an incident caught on video shows a man wearing military gear, surrounded by members of the Taliban, whom observers refer to as civilians. After a gunshot was heard, the man fell to the ground.

According to the report, the BBC said it had heard of 20 similar incidents involving civilians in the area following the Taliban takeover. One of the victims was a shopkeeper and father of two children named Abdul Sami, who according to sources refused to flee during the Taliban military action.

He was later arrested and accused of selling telecommunications sim cards to anti-Taliban opposition fighters, his body later dumped near his home.

The claim comes as a senior Afghan diplomat from the former government on Tuesday described the deteriorating human rights situation in his country, where he said women's rights were disappearing under the Taliban.

"The Afghan people need action more than ever", the ousted Afghan government's ambassador to the UN Nasir Ahmad Andisha told the UN human rights council in Geneva, calling on the council to set up a fact-finding mission to monitor the actions of the Taliban in the country.

The report extends the list of retaliatory actions taken by the Taliban, both during their campaign of massive military offensives across Afghanistan and after they seized power.

In August, Amnesty International detailed the massacre of nine ethnic Hazara men, after Taliban fighters seized control of Afghanistan's Ghazni Province in July.

Witnesses gave harrowing accounts of the killings, which took place between July 4 and 6 in Mundarakht village, Malistan district, including how three people were tortured to death, including one who was strangled with his own scarf.

Earlier, last Monday the UN high commissioner for human rights, Michelle Bachelet, described credible allegations of the revenge killings of a number of former ANSF (Afghan National Security Forces) personnel, and reports of officials, who worked for the previous administration and their family members on arbitrarily detained”.

"In some cases, the officials were released, and in other cases, they were found dead", Bachelet said.

He also cited "several" allegations of house-to-house searches for the Taliban seeking officials from the previous government, as well as people working with US security forces and companies.