(BNA):\u00a0The U.S. and British embassies in Kabul said on Monday the insurgent Taliban may have committed war crimes in southern Afghanistan by carrying out revenge murders of civilians, a charge denied by the insurgents. The U.S. Embassy in the capital Kabul tweeted a statement accusing the Taliban of killing dozens of civilians in the area of Spin Boldak in southern Kandahar province. The statement was also tweeted by the British embassy. \u201cThese murders could constitute war crimes; they must be investigated & those Taliban fighters or commanders responsible held accountable,\u201d the U.S. Embassy tweeted. In a second tweet, it said: \u201cThe Taliban\u2019s leadership must be held responsible for the crimes of their fighters. If you cannot control your fighters now, you have no business in governance later.\u201d The tweets, accompanied by calls for a ceasefire, stepped up the United States\u2019 public criticism of the group as U.S. troops withdraw and the Taliban goes on the offensive. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last week that Afghanistan would become a \u2018pariah state\u2019 if any future Taliban rule in Afghanistan resulted in atrocities against civilians. The insurgents gained control last month of the strategic area of Spin Boldak, which lies at crossing with Pakistan, and heavy fighting has taken place since as Afghan forces try to recapture the area.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(BNA):\u00a0The U.S. and British embassies in Kabul said on Monday the insurgent Taliban may have committed war crimes in southern Afghanistan by carrying out revenge murders of civilians, a charge denied by the insurgents. The U.S. Embassy in the capital Kabul tweeted a statement accusing the Taliban of killing dozens of civilians in the area […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archived-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3628"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3629,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3628\/revisions\/3629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}