Mother and children beheaded in Afghan ‘honour killing’

A 30-year-old woman and two of her children have been beheaded in Afghanistan in a so-called honour killing.

Police said they believe the woman, Serata, was murdered after her divorced husband barged into her house in the capital of Ghazni province in the east of the country overnight on Tuesday and attacked her, her eight-year-old son and nine-year-old daughter.

“The children saw the killer take their mother’s head off, so he killed them too,” a policeman said, adding that the attacker, acting to “uphold his family’s honour”, had spared a two-year-old daughter.

Activists claim there has been a sharp rise in violent attacks on women in Afghanistan in recent months. They blame president Hamid Karzai’s waning attention to women’s rights as his government prepares for the departure foreign troops in 2014 and seeks to negotiate with the Taleban, Afghanistan’s former Islamist rulers.

There have been a further 16 such “honour killings” recorded in Afghanistan in March and April, the first two months of the Afghan new year, according to the Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC).

This compares to the 20 cases recorded last year, said commissioner Suraya Subhrang, blaming increased insecurity for the sharp rise. Since AIHRC started recording such killings in 2001, there have never been more than 20 cases a year.

“And there are many that go unreported. Men make a quick decision in their own courts to kill a girl and hold a prayer for her the next day,” Ms Subhrang said.

Serata divorced Mohammad Arif, 38, a year ago after enduring almost a decade of domestic abuse, said Shukria Wali, head of Ghazni’s department of women’s affairs in Kabul.

Police are still hunting Arif.