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The Taliban carried out a double public execution at a stadium in southeastern Afghanistan on Thursday as thousands watched the killing of two convicted men as their victims’ relatives fired the gunshot.

The Taliban’s Supreme Court had ruled that the pair were responsible for the stabbing deaths of two victims in separate attacks, according to a court statement.

It identified the two as Syed Jamal from central Wardak province and Gul Khan from Ghazni — though it was unclear who did the stabbing, the two convicted men or others.

The statement also said that three lower courts and the Taliban’s supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, had ordered the executions in retribution for their purported crimes.

On Thursday, people crowded outside the stadium in the Ali Lala area of the city of Ghazni, clambering to get in, and religious scholars pleaded with relatives of the victims to forgive the convicts, but they refused.

Abu Abu Khalid Sarhadi, a spokesman for Ghazni police, said that relatives of the victims executed the two men. He did not say what type of guns they used.

The executions started shortly before 1 pm. There were 15 bullets fired, eight at one of the men and seven at the other. Ambulances then took their bodies away.

The killings were the third and fourth public executions since the Taliban seized power in 2021 amid the chaotic withdrawal of US and NATO forces from Afghanistan.

The United Nations has strongly criticised the Taliban for carrying out public executions, lashings and stonings since seizing power, and called on the country’s rulers to halt such practices.

During their previous rule of Afghanistan in the late 1990s, the Taliban regularly carried out public executions, floggings and stonings.