Afghan girl beheaded for refusing marriage

KUNDUZ - Afghanistan

Two men have been arrested for slitting the throat of a 15-year-old Afghan girl after her family refused a marriage proposal, police said Nov. 28.

The girl was carrying water from a river to her village home in northern Kunduz province when she was murdered, police spokesman Sayed Sarwar Hussaini told Agence France-Presse. “The two men attacked her and slit her throat with a knife,” he said. “They were arrested and are in police custody.”
Hussaini added one of the suspects had proposed marriage to the girl but her family had rejected the offer. Extreme violence against women and girls remains a major problem in the country more than a decade after U.S.-led troops brought down Taliban regime.

According to figures by British charity organization Oxfam, 87 percent of Afghan women report having experienced physical, sexual or psychological violence or forced marriage. Unmarried girls are often confined to the home and forbidden from maintaining any contact with men outside the immediate family.

Roadside bomb kills 10

In another development, a roadside bomb killed 10 civilians, including a woman and five children, and wounded eight when it ripped through a van in southern Afghanistan.

The families were on their way to visit a relative who had recently returned from Mecca when their vehicle was hit in Dih Rawud district in rural Uruzgan province. Roadside bombs are the weapon of choice of Taliban militants. While the Taliban say their targets are military, civilians using the same roads are frequently the victims.

In the first six months of 2012, a total of 1,145 Afghan civilians were killed and around 2,000 were wounded, mostly by roadside bombs, according to United Nations figures.