Militants publicly beheaded six alleged criminals and lashed three others in an outbreak of vigilante violence on Friday, officials and witnesses said. The incidents were the latest in a series blamed on hard-liners who are seeking to emulate Afghanistan's 1996-2001 Taliban regime by introducing harsh Islamic laws and punishments.
In the lawless Mohmand tribal district bordering Afghanistan, pro-Taliban rebels decapitated six members of a kidnapping-for-ransom gang after a blood-soaked feud, local government official Miraj Khan said.
It started when militants on Thursday night raided the house of the gang's chief in connection with the death of one of their colleagues, the official said. The gang leader opened fire, killing four of the militants, but they later killed him and five of his family members, burned down his house and seized another six of his followers.
"The militants on Friday publicly beheaded all six of them while holding funeral prayers for their own colleagues," Miraj told AFP. Meanwhile a hard-line vigilante group lashed three alleged kidnappers in front of a crowd of 20,000 people in Matta, a town in the conservative Swat Valley in North West Frontier Province.
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