A mass grave has been found in Afghanistan’s southern province of Kandahar.

Two spokespeople for the de facto Taliban government told dpa on Tuesday that the mass grave that includes 16 bodies was found three days ago in Spin Boldak district while digging a well.

“They are skulls and bones,’’ said Noor Ahmad Saeed, the head of the Information and Culture Department in Kandahar.

Taliban officials claim that the victims were killed around nine years ago by the former police chief of Kandahar, Abdul Razeq, when the internationally backed Afghan government controlled the area.

Mr Razeq, the famous anti-Taliban commander in the south of the country, was assassinated by a Taliban infiltrator at the end of a meeting with the top U.S. general in Afghanistan, Scott Miller, in 2018.

The UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, said he was hoping for a forensic examination.

The organisation, Human Rights Watch, has called for an investigation into the alleged crimes while urging the Taliban authorities to prevent acts of revenge.

In addition to the killings of civilians in deadly suicide bombings, the Taliban forces are also accused of extrajudicial killings across the country.

The warring Afghan sides were accused of committing war crimes during the decades of the Afghan conflict.

(dpa/NAN)