IT WAS A FRIDAY afternoon when the motorcycles arrived.
On 10 April this year, families had gathered near a Shia shrine in Injil district, in Afghanistan’s western province of Herat, as they often did on Fridays. Some had come to pray. Others had brought food for a picnic. Children were playing. Families sat and ate lunch.
The Sayed Mohammad Agha shrine, in Deh-Mehri village, is a 20-minute drive from Herat city, the provincial capital, and is surrounded by beautiful farmland. It is an important site for the Shia community, who visit to offer prayers but also gather there for recreation. A lone village elder tends to the place and there are no guards.
On that day, around 30 to 40 families had already gathered, according to eyewitness accounts, with more on the way. Around 2 pm, two motorcycles arrived carrying four armed men. At least one of them had a Kalashnikov, the others handguns. Their faces were covered. They wore ordinary Afghan clothes, which did not immediately distinguish them from local men or Taliban members. Some thought they might be officials from the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, set up shortly after the Taliban took power in 2021, which had already been monitoring and policing public spaces and family gatherings in Herat. But there was little time to make sense of who they were and why they had arrived.
The four men moved quickly. They ordered the men at the site to gather near the shrine, away from the women and children. They searched them and took away their phones and money.
Then they called for the village head, Sultan Ahmad Akbari. He came with his two sons. When he introduced himself, the man carrying the Kalashnikov shot him and his sons. They died on the spot. The men who had been grouped together ran for their lives.
The gunmen then opened fire on everyone.