The 2015 Zabul massacre refers to the killing of seven Afghan

Shia Shīʿa Islam or Shīʿīsm is the second-largest Islamic schools and branches, branch of Islam. It holds that the Prophets and messengers in Islam, Islamic prophet Muhammad in Islam, Muhammad designated Ali, ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib as his S ...

Hazaras The Hazaras ( fa, , Həzārə; haz, , Āzərə) are an ethnic group and the principal component of the population of Afghanistan, native to, and primarily residing in the Hazaristan (Hazarajat) region in central Afghanistan and generally scatt ...

on 9 November 2015 in the southern Afghan province of Zabul.

Hostage-taking and executions

Fighters claiming allegiance to the

Islamic State An Islamic state is a State (polity), state that has a form of government based on sharia, Islamic law (sharia). As a term, it has been used to describe various historical Polity, polities and theories of governance in the Islamic world. As a t ...

took seven members of the Hazara ethnic group hostage in October 2015 in

Ghazni Ghazni ( prs, غزنی, ps, غزني), historically known as Ghaznain () or Ghazna (), also transliterated as Ghuznee, and anciently known as Alexandria in Opiana ( gr, Αλεξάνδρεια Ωπιανή), is a city in southeastern Afghanistan ...

and held them in Arghandab District, Zabul Province. The hostages included four men, two women, and a nine-year-old girl, Shukria Tabassum. The hostages were moved 56 times to avoid their rescue by Afghan military forces. Two hundred

Taliban The Taliban (; ps, طالبان, ṭālibān, lit=students or 'seekers'), which also refers to itself by its state (polity), state name, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a Deobandi Islamic fundamentalism, Islamic fundamentalist, m ...

fighters were involved in battles with the Islamic State group and another insurgent group. The hostages were executed on 9 November 2015 by the Islamic State group Several Western media sources described the execution as a

beheading Decapitation or beheading is the total separation of the head from the body. Such an injury is invariably fatal to humans and most other animals, since it deprives the brain of oxygenated blood, while all other organs are deprived of the i ...

. Martine van Bijlert stated that this was most likely a mistranslation ( prs, حلال کردن, ), and that the victims' throats had been slit, most likely with kite wire sharpened with glass for

kite fighting Fighter kites are kites used for the sport of kite fighting. Traditionally most are small, unstable single-line flat kites where line tension alone is used for control, at least part of which is manja, typically glass-coated cotton strands, ...

. The victims were later found by the Taliban. Local elders helped arrange for the bodies to be transferred to a hospital in territory controlled by the Afghan government.

Legal status

Nicholas Haysom, head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, stated that the killings could constitute war crimes. UNAMA commented that the hostage-taking and murder of civilians are serious violations of humanitarian law.

Aftermath

The grassroots

Tabassum movement The Tabassum movement ( prs, جنبش تبسم, ) was a grassroots protest movement in Afghanistan that held several protests in Kabul and other Afghan cities in mid-November 2015, following the execution by an armed opposition group of nine-year- ...

started on 11 November 2015, when about two to twenty thousand mourners carried the coffins containing the seven bodies to the presidential palace in

Kabul Kabul (; ps, , ; , ) is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. Located in the eastern half of the country, it is also a municipality, forming part of the Kabul Province; it is administratively divided into 22 municipal districts. Acco ...

, protesting against the lack of security provided by government forces.

References

2010s missing person cases Zabul massacre Hazarajat History of Zabul Province Kidnappings in Afghanistan Kidnapping in the 2010s Killing of captives by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant 2015 massacres of the War in Afghanistan (2001–2021) Massacres of Hazara people Massacres perpetrated by ISIL Missing person cases in Afghanistan Zabul massacre Zabul massacre ISIL terrorist incidents in Afghanistan {{Afghanistan-hist-stub

Hostage-taking and executions

Legal status

Aftermath

See also

References