SARBANI, Afghanistan: A mass grave with 100 bodies believed to be from Afghanistan’s Soviet war has been discovered in the country’s eastern Khost province, said local officials on Monday.
Mayor Bismillah Bilal said the grave was unearthed during construction of a small dam in the Sarbani area of central Khost.
He added that the initial information had suggested that these people were buried after being killed in in Soviet war from April 1979 to March 1980.
“At least 100 bodies were discovered” in the grave, Bilal added. He said that some remains are with women’s clothing and that all seemed to be civilians.
According to the local residents the remains belonged to victims of the violence that took place in 1978 carried out by Soviet-backed communist coup in Afghanistan.
Salam Sharifi, whose father disappeared under the communist government, told media that these people were brought here in a barbaric way by the cruel communist authorities.
“They were martyred and we are their descendants,” he said.
A committee has been formed to relocate the remains, with the help of municipality workers and local residents to remove the bodies from the site.
Another resident Mandair Mangal said that no one knows about the identity of those killed.
After decades of war including the Soviet invasion from 1979, and civil war many mass graves have been discovered across Afghanistan.
In 2009, another mass grave of victims of the Soviet-backed government era was found containing at least 20 bodies.
