Teen feigns death to escape Taliban massacre

October 21, 2008

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A 17-year-old boy has survived a Taliban massacre of bus passengers by pretending to dead while he lay among the corpses of shot men.

In a hospital in the southern town of Gereshk in Afghanistan’s Helmand province, the Afghan teenager described how he had hidden wounded among the corpses of five men shot dead by Taliban after they were accused of being police recruits.

The youngster, known as Shukrullah, said he was among about 40 men pulled off a bus travelling through southern Afghanistan last week and split into smaller groups.

“Taliban made us kneel in a ditch and fired at us. Five other people who were with me died and I survived,” he said.

Police confirmed they had found five bodies after six others were discovered Sunday in Helmand. They believe around 30 men were killed.

The Taliban has claimed to have killed 27.

The US condemned the reported Taliban attack on the bus.

“This is a heinous act. It just goes to show that the Taliban are ruthless killers who would do anything they can to stop progress in Afghanistan,” State Department deputy spokesman Robert Wood said.

Yesterday was a day of bloodshed in the toubled country with a British aid worker, two German soldiers and five Afghan children were killed.

President Hamid Karzai condemned the killing of aid worker Gayle Williams, who was shot dead in Kabul, as well as the deaths of the German troops and children in a suicide attack in the north.

He said the murder of Ms Williams, 34, who also had South African nationality, was cowardly and unforgivable.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon also condemned the killing of Ms Williams, and aid workers in Somalia, urging respect for the neutral and impartial status of humanitarian personnel.

Ms Williams was gunned down as she walked to work at SERVE Afghanistan, a British-based Christian charity that helps disabled people.

“Two armed men sitting on a motorbike shot her dead. Some bullets hit her body and some hit her leg and when police got there she was dead,” interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary said.

The attackers had fled and their motive was unknown, he said.

The Taliban, which has carried out similar assassinations in the southern city of Kandahar, said it was responsible.

“We killed her because she was working for an organisation which was preaching Christianity in Afghanistan,” spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said by telephone.

SERVE Afghanistan rejected the charge of preaching. “We have a specific policy against proselytising,” said the London-based chairman of the board, Mike Lyth.

Mr Karzai also expressed condolences for the deaths of five Afghan children and two German soldiers killed in a suicide attack in the northern province of Kunduz for which the Taliban claimed responsibility.

German Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung confirmed the deaths of two German soldiers, saying it was a “cowardly ambush” that showed the “Taliban contempt for human life.”

Germany has about 3300 soldiers in a 40-nation NATO-led force helping Afghan forces tackle the Taliban insurgency.

This year 232 international soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan, more than in the whole of 2007, most of them in insurgent bomb attacks.

Attacks in the post-Taliban era are agreed to be at an all-time high this year with the UN special envoy to Afghanistan Kai Eide saying last week that July and August recorded the most incidents since 2002.

A security watchdog, Afghanistan NGO Safety Group, said last week that insurgent attacks on aid workers were at the highest level in six years. In other incidents, 10 Taliban were reported killed in clashes, one near the town of Lashkar Gah which has come under repeated attack in the past week.

The Helmand government claimed 34 had been killed but the defence ministry said only six bodies were found.

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