LTTE accuses Lankan troops of hospital attack

Kandahar, Oct. 26: Suspected Taliban militants gouged out the eyes of an Afghan farmer after accusing him of spying for international forces and the government, an official alleged on Sunday.

Helmand province farmer Sayed Ghulam said his eyes had been removed with a knife on Thursday, as his family watched, although he would not say who was responsible.

Armed men knocked on the door of his home in Sangin district and when he opened, they had dragged him outside, said the farmer from his hospital bed in the southern city of Kandahar. "About 20 metres (yards) away from my house, they held my hands and took out my eyes with a knife. It was very painful and the world turned black," he said, a bandage across his eyes.

"They only said, ‘You vicious man’," he said when asked why this had been done. "My kids and wife were watching when they did it. They were screaming."

Mr Ghulam would not say who his attackers were. Provincial government spokesperson Daud Ahmadi blamed Taliban militants, who are active in Helmand. "They have killed so many innocent people, men and women, baselessly accusing them of spying for the government or foreign forces," he said.

"This time they took out the eyes of a poor farmer. He is not a spy, he’s just a poor farmer," Mr Ahmadi said. The Taliban have already been accused of beheading and slicing off the ears and noses of people they allege work with the authorities. The group denied responsibility for the attack on the farmer and alleged the government was trying to defame them.

—AFP