Afghanistan’s Taliban shot dead seven men, two of them truck drivers for a Western security firm, who had been kidnapped in the past week, police and a rebel spokesman said on Sunday.
The seven — three policemen, two soldiers and the drivers — were killed in the central province of Ghazni on Saturday night, they said.
A Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahed, said the men were shot dead after attempting to escape "from our jail."
Provincial police chief Khan Mohammad Mujahed said that bodies had been recovered and police were looking for more. "We’ve learnt that they have been killed," he said.
The seven were kidnapped on December 17 and 18 along the main road between Kabul and the southern city of Kandahar, he said.
In their biggest hostage-taking, the Taliban captured 23 South Korean nationals in July along the same road in the same province.
They killed two of the group of Christian aid workers before releasing the rest, most of them after secret talks with the South Korean government.
The extremist Taliban were removed from power in a US-led invasion in late 2001 and are now waging an insurgency that has gained pace this year with a spike in suicide bombings, kidnappings and other rebel attacks.
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