In a new wave of violence, the Taliban militants have killed 40 bus passengers after taking them as hostage in Afghanistan's southern Kandahar province, provincial police chief Matihullah Khan Qati said Sunday.

"Taliban rebels stopped a passenger bus on a highway in Kandahar Friday and took hostage all its 50 passengers," Qati told Xinhua. "The militants Saturday set 10 of them free and killed the remaining 40 commuters."

Six bodies of the ill-fated passengers have been picked up by the police so far, he added.

The provincial police chief said the insurgents on Thursday opened fire on a bus in Miwand district, killing one passenger and wounding another.

Meantime, the Taliban purported spokesman Qari Yusuf Ahmadi in talks with media said that all those killed by the militants were soldiers. Zahir Azimi, the spokesman for Afghan Defense Ministry, rejected the claim, saying none of those murdered by the rebels were soldiers.

Taliban militants, fighting Afghan and international troops, in a similar incident, took hostage more than 50 laborers in the western Farah province late last month but set them free after keeping them in captivity for a few days.

(Xinhua News Agency October 20, 2008)