Taliban militants on Wednesday beheaded four Afghan roadworkers, abducted a week ago, while a series of rebel bombings in Kandahar killed three civilians, authorities said. The militants who abducted the four men in Nuristan had demanded ransom from their families, the Interior Ministry said in a statement. “After the families refused, they committed such a barbaric act,” it said.The statement blamed the decapitations on the Taliban, who have previously used this style of murder. In another incident on Wednesday, a suicide car bomb exploded near a NATO convoy in southern Kandahar province but missed the troops, a NATO spokesman and a police chief said.
No soldiers with NATO’s International Security Assistance Force were hurt, a spokesman told AFP. Kandahar police chief Sayed Agha Saqeb said four civilians were hurt. He blamed the attack on Taliban rebels. Also in Kandahar, two civilians were killed and four were hurt when a bomb planted on a road exploded under their vehicle on Tuesday, Saqeb said. “The bomb was planted by Taliban to target security forces but it hit innocent civilians,” he said. Another civilian was killed in a similar explosion in the province on Tuesday, he added.