Thousands of Afghans protest beheading of 7 Shia Muslims by Takfiris

The murdered Shia Hazaras included four men, one woman and two girls. Some had their throats slit – it is not clear by whom.

Their bodies were found at the weekend in southern Zabul province where fighting between rival Taliban factions has escalated over the last few days.

One group claims to have launched a rare suicide attack on the other.

The protests in Ghazni saw huge crowds march through the city as the coffins were driven through the streets.

Protesters chanted slogans against the Taliban and the so-called Islamic State group and demanded better protection from the government.

Ghazni has a large population of minority Hazaras who are mostly Shia Muslims. But unlike in neighbouring Pakistan they have been largely spared attacks by Sunni militants in recent years.

The bodies of the seven victims were later moved to Kabul where hundreds were waiting to meet the coffins ahead of further protests.

The Hazara have long suffered oppression and persecution in Afghanistan. During the 1990s, thousands were killed by al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters.

Sayed Zafar Hashemi, deputy spokesman for President Ashraf Ghani, said security threats affect the entire nation, and not just specific communities.

“We are doing everything we can to help protect our people,” he said.

Afghanistan has several ethnic groups including Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks and Turkmen – mainly in the north and west – as well as Pashtun, located primarily in the south and east.

ISIL emerged in Afghanistan last year. A Taliban splinter group calling itself the High Council of Afghanistan Islamic Emirate announced last week  it elected its own leader, defying new Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansoor.

Violent clashes between two armed groups in southern Afghanistan erupted on Sunday, resulting in the death of at least 50 fighters from both sides.

TALIBAN “PROPAGANDA”

Provincial officials initially blamed the killings on Islamic State militants, and there were unconfirmed reports that the perpetrators had been caught and summarily executed either by local residents or Taliban.

However, Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security (NDS) intelligence agency rejected the reports as Taliban “propaganda”.

Separately on Tuesday, Afghan security forces freed eight Hazara, part of a group of 31 who were kidnapped from a bus several months ago, the NDS said in a statement.

Since the killings of the 1990s, the Taliban has largely avoided specifically targeting Hazaras or Shia Muslims, but the rise in the number of fighters claiming allegiance to the even more hardline Islamic State movement may change that.

The Taliban’s success in seizing control of the northern city of Kunduz and holding it for three days a few weeks ago delivered a huge blow to public confidence in the government’s ability to control security.

But in recent days, the Taliban has been caught up in troubles of its own after a splinter faction defied Mullah Akhtar Mansour, who assumed the leadership in July following confirmation of the death of the movement’s founder Mullah Omar.

Fierce fighting between the rival factions continued on Tuesday and spread beyond the southern province of Zabul into Herat and Farah in the west, according to Mullah Abdul Manan Niazi, a spokesman for the breakaway faction.