By CARLOTTA GALL
KABUL, Afghanistan, Aug. 9 — Taliban militants killed a woman and her 13-year-old son after accusing them of spying for the government and for foreign troops in southern Afghanistan, the Afghan government said Wednesday.
The woman was shot and her son was hanged by an electrical wire from a tree on Monday in Helmand Province, said a spokesman for the provincial governor, Hajji Mohaiuddin.
In a separate attack late Tuesday night, a group of insurgents fired rockets and small-caliber weapons at an American military base in Nuristan Province in northeastern Afghanistan, an American military statement said. It said the Americans had responded with mortars and gunfire and 13 insurgents had been killed.
Taliban have started a new reign of terror which reminds our people of their medieval rule from 1996 to 2001.British troops have been battling insurgents in northern Helmand Province in recent weeks, and a NATO soldier was wounded in Musa Qala on Wednesday, officials said. The woman and her son were killed in the village of Dast Mastan, near Musa Qala. Local officials, including the police chief, informed the provincial authorities about the killings, Mr. Mohaiuddin said.
“They were very poor people and they were accused of spying for the government and the foreign troops,” he said. “Definitely it was done by the Taliban.”
He said reports of denials by a Taliban spokesman were not credible. “They deny anything they do, and claim responsibility for things they didn’t do,” he said of the Taliban, the religious militia linked to the government that was ousted in 2001.
Elders and leaders of Helmand Province had gathered Wednesday in the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, to condemn the killings, he said. “We all condemned this,” he said. “This is not an action of a human or according to Islam.”
American and NATO military officials said Taliban insurgents were resorting to fear tactics to establish control among the population in parts of Afghanistan. Col. Thomas Collins, a spokesman for the United States-led coalition, said coalition forces had learned from residents of one district in Ghazni Province, south of Kabul, that men suspected of being insurgents knocked on doors and demanded that each family provide a son to join the Taliban.
NATO spokesmen said they had learned of similar cases in southern Afghanistan, where NATO forces are now operating, including a case of insurgents killing a son in a family who refused the gunmen’s orders.
President Hamid Karzai, who is fending off an insurgency that has expanded across the six southern provinces and some eastern provinces, also denounced the killings as being against the historical and cultural values of Muslims.
“The gruesome act is unforgivable, and no one can justify it,” he said in a statement. “This shameful act is an affront to all Afghans and their historical traditions.”