{"id":25952,"date":"2016-06-09T02:48:02","date_gmt":"2016-06-09T02:48:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/afghan-taliban-abducts-40-passengers-on-kunduz\/"},"modified":"2016-06-09T02:55:58","modified_gmt":"2016-06-09T02:55:58","slug":"afghan-taliban-abducts-40-passengers-on-kunduz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/afghan-taliban-abducts-40-passengers-on-kunduz\/","title":{"rendered":"Afghan Taliban abducts 40 passengers on Kunduz highway"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{Taliban takes 40 more people hostage, officials say, as Afghan authorities recover 12 bodies of security personnel.}<\/p>\n<p>The Taliban abducted at least 40 people on a highway in Afghanistan&#8217;s northern province of Kunduz, Afghan officials have said.<\/p>\n<p>The attackers stopped two vehicles &#8211; a 50-seater bus and a station wagon &#8211; in Khanabad district on the road from Kunduz city to Takhar, police spokesman Mahfuzullah Akbari said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>Seven people managed to escape, Akbari added.<\/p>\n<p>Taliban gunmen are increasingly staging ambushes on provincial highways and main roads in their war &#8211; now in its 15th year &#8211; to overthrow the Kabul government.<\/p>\n<p>Last week, the Taliban killed 10 bus passengers, many of them summarily executed, and took hostage dozens of others also in Kunduz province. <\/p>\n<p>The group said at the time that they were targeting Afghan security officials on board the buses.<\/p>\n<p>{{Bodies recovered}}<\/p>\n<p>Separately, Afghan authorities said on Wednesday that they have recovered the bullet-ridden bodies of 12 security officials who had recently been captured by the Taliban in eastern Ghazni province.<\/p>\n<p>The 12 soldiers, police and intelligence officers were captured over the past two months from different highway crossings in Ghazni province. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The bodies &#8230; of our personnel captured by the enemy were discovered in Andar district this morning,&#8221; Ghazni&#8217;s Governor Mohammad Aman Hamim told reporters.<\/p>\n<p>The violence underscores Afghanistan&#8217;s fragile security situation as the Taliban, who launched their annual spring offensive in April, rejected government calls this week for a ceasefire during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.<\/p>\n<p>The Taliban has so far not commented on the 12 captives and the latest abduction.<\/p>\n<p>Taliban fighters have stepped up attacks after announcing Haibatullah Akhundzada as their new leader on May 25, elevating a low-profile religious figure after officially confirming the death of Mullah Mansour in a US drone strike.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-12700 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/2b2352a9f12f4282ac4fcc104a6d0319_18.jpg\" alt=\"Taliban gunmen are increasingly staging ambushes on provincial highways\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{Taliban takes 40 more people hostage, officials say, as Afghan authorities recover 12 bodies of security personnel.} The Taliban abducted at least 40 people on a highway in Afghanistan&#8217;s northern province of Kunduz, Afghan officials have said. The attackers stopped two vehicles &#8211; a 50-seater bus and a station wagon &#8211; in Khanabad district on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-25952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25952\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25952"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=25952"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=25952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}