Taliban promise cash rewards, plots of land to ‘heroic’ suicide bombers’ families

The Taliban is gifting a plot of land and cash rewards to the family members of “heroic” suicide bombers who died after targeting US and Afghan forces, a spokesman for the group’s interior ministry said on Twitter.

Writing on social media, Taliban spokesman Qari Saeed Khosty quoted an announcement made the previous day by acting interior minister Sirajuddin Haqqani, who described the “martyred” bombers who died for “jihad and sacrifices” as “heroes of Islam and the country.”

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Haqqani, the acting interior ministry who has a $10 million US bounty on his head as a “specially designated global terrorist”, met the families at a ceremony at the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul, which was itself targeted by suicide bombers in 2018.

Official photographs of the meeting on Tuesday were posted on social media.

“In his speech, the minister praised the Jihad and sacrifices of the martyrs and Mujahidin and called them heroes of Islam and the country,” Khosty said in a statement on Twitter. “He called them heroes of the believing nation.”

“The advent of the Islamic system is the result of the blood of our martyrs. Now you and I must refrain from betraying the aspiration of our martyrs.”

Families of the suicide bombers were given clothing, 10,000 afghani ($111) and promised plots of land, spokesman Khosti said.

Haqqani took over from his father Jalaluddin Haqqani as head of the Haqqani network, an extremist group affiliated with the Taliban that was blamed by Western intelligence services for some of the bloodiest suicide attacks of the war.

He is wanted for questioning by the FBI in connection with an attack on another hotel in Kabul in 2008 in which six people including an American citizen were killed.

Following the Taliban’s victory over the Western-backed government which collapsed in August, ISIS fighters have carried out a series of suicide bombings against mosques and other targets, killing hundreds of civilians.

With Reuters

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