Two schoolchildren including a nine-year-old girl were shot dead by militants in Afghanistan after their father refused to quit his job as a policeman, officials said Sunday. Henna and her 16-year-old brother Zelgai were killed by two gunmen on motorcycles late on Saturday while in their father's car in the Edgah area of Ghazni province, in the south of the country.
"They were playing inside my car, and the Taliban maybe thought it was me in the car. They opened fire at the car and killed my children," the father, Zalmai, who uses just one name, told AFP.
He said the Taliban had warned him several times in the past that his family would be at risk if he did not leave his job. "The children were killed by Taliban because their father is a policeman working for Ghazni's municipality," provincial spokesman Fazil Sabawoon said, blaming hard-line Islamist insurgents for the attack. "They had warned him to leave his job as police and join them," he added.
A witness, Hamidullah, told AFP that two gunmen on motorcycles opened fire at the vehicle the children were in and fled the area. Taliban militants, whose regime was toppled by a US-led invasion in 2001 for harbouring Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden after the 9/11 attacks.