An Afghan woman accused of murdering her mother-in- law was killed by a relative in southern Afghanistan after local Taliban leaders approved the execution, officials said Sunday, dpa reported.
The woman pushed her mother-in-law into a bread oven in the Aab Band district of the province Ghazni on Thursday with help from another daughter-in-law, said Ismail Jahangir, a spokesman for the provincial governor.
She was in turn killed hours later by the deceased's brother. The life of the other daughter-in-law was spared because she is pregnant.
"The area is under Taliban control and according to locals, the Taliban approved the killing and provided a Kalashnikov (assault rifle) to the dead woman's family," another official in Ghazni, who did not want to be named, said.
Jahangir said the police forces were trying to evacuate the second daughter-in-law from the area.
Taliban militants are active in large swaths of the southern region, where they settle local legal problems and mete out justice based on strict interpretation of Islamic laws.
The Taliban publicly executed suspected murderers and chopped off the hands and feet of suspected thieves when they ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001.