Islamic State Fighters Beheaded, Heads Displayed Publicly

Kabul: Militiamen supported by the influential Afghanistan's parliament deputy speaker beheaded four Islamic State (IS) fighters and publicly displayed their severed heads in a first of its kind attack on the dreaded jihadi group in Afghanistan on Sunday.

The killings in volatile Nangarhar province bordering Pakistan provoked horror and condemnation in a country that has witnessed four decades of bloodshed and war.

The militia force loyal to Haji Zahir, deputy speaker of parliament, has been battling self-styled Islamic State militants in Achin district in the province for weeks.

Zahir said the group captured and beheaded four of his fighters and his men retaliated.

“If they behead you, behead your son, do you expect us to cook sweets for them?” the firebrand politician told reporters.

“Sweets are not distributed during war. People die.”

Zahir’s men placed the severed heads of four militants atop stacks of stones on the side of a main road in Achin, district officials said.

“If they were criminals then they should have been punished by the judiciary, not by a kangaroo court,” district chief Haji Ghaleb said in comments cited by the local

media. He called the killing of the IS men barbaric.

Nangarhar faces an emerging threat from loyalists of Islamic State, which controls territory across Syria and Iraq and is making gradual inroads in Afghanistan,

challenging the Taliban on their own turf.

The jihadis have managed to attract disaffected Taliban fighters increasingly lured by the group’s signature brutality that has made them notorious.

In a sign of their growing reach in Afghanistan, the group has taken to the airwaves in a 90-minute Pashto-language radio show called “Voice of the Caliphate."

The government is trying to block the broadcast, beamed from an undisclosed location, that is aimed at winning new recruits.