Woman beheaded in Afghanistan 'for going out in city without her husband'

No one arrested and Taliban deny involvement

Under Taliban rule, women were publicly flogged, lashed and executed in football stadiums (Getty)

A woman has been beheaded for visiting a city without her husband, officials in Afghanistan have said.

The 30-year-old was decapitated and stabbed to death on Monday evening in Lati in the Sar-e-Pul province of northern Afghanistan.

The Middle East Press claims a government spokesman told them Taliban militants killed her for the “infidelity act” of going shopping without a male guardian.

The Taliban, which occupies Lati, imposes fierce policies of discrimination against women which includes banning them speaking loudly in public and appearing in media.

Punishments have included public lashings and executions in football stadiums.

National broadcaster Tolo News reports that the provincial governor spokesman Zabiullah Amani said the woman’s husband is in Iran, and that they do not have children.

It also claims Sar-e-Pul women’s affairs head Nasima Arezo has confirmed the incident took place.

No one has been arrested and the Taliban have reportedly rejected any involvement.

The Sunni fundamentalist movement, which has roots in the days of Soviet occupation and emerged out of the Afghan civil war in around 1994, held power between 1996 and 2001.

It has continued to wage deadly terrorist attacks including the killing of four people in a bomb attack at a US airfield last month and a Taliban suicide bomber’s murder of nearly 40 people near Kabul.

A Taliban gunman shot Malala Yousafzai, who went on to become the youngest-ever Nobel Prize laureate for her activism, in Pakistan in October 2012.