Evil.

(AFP) — Taliban insurgents have executed five civilians near Kabul for working with NATO troops, authorities say, the latest in a series of militant activities in villages around the capital.

The news on Sunday of the incident in Wardak province’s Jalrez district, 40 kilometres south of Kabul, came a day after the insurgents publicly lashed two Afghan men and just weeks after the public execution of a woman for adultery.

In Jalrez, the rebels captured six Afghans returning home from work at a NATO base. The bodies of five of them were found on Sunday, all booby-trapped with explosives, a statement from the provincial governor’s office said.

Their hands were tied behind their backs, a witness told AFP.

The sixth man fled his captors, the statement added, blaming the killings on the Taliban, the main insurgent group fighting the Western-backed government of President Hamid Karzai and a 130,000-strong US-led NATO force.