Unidentified gunmen in Afghanistan on Saturday kidnapped 14 bus passengers believed to be from the Hazara ethnic minority, 10 days after the killing of seven Hazaras by militants sparked one of the bi
Unidentified gunmen in Afghanistan on Saturday kidnapped 14 bus passengers believed to be from the Hazara ethnic minority, 10 days after the killing of seven Hazaras by militants sparked one of the biggest protests in Kabul in years.
Gunmen stopped three night buses in Zabul province, on the main road between Kabul and the southern city of Kandahar, and kidnapped passengers, said the provincial police chief Mirwais Noorzai.
He said he did not know how many people had been taken or their identity but the manager of a bus company and a provincial official said the gunmen had taken at least 14 Hazara people.
“The gunmen asked for identity documents and when people showed them, they took away only Hazaras,” Sayed Mohebul-lah, a manager for the Ahmad Shah Abdali bus company, told Reuters. He believed the gunman had also taken people from other buses. Asadullah Kakar, a member of the Zabul provincial council, said he believed 20 people, all but two of them Haza-ras, had been taken away.
The Hazara are a Persian-speaking, mainly Shia min-ority who have long faced persecution in Afghani-stan, with thousands massacred by the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the 1990s, but a series of attacks in 2015 has stoked a mood of growing despair.
