The Taliban have announced that their supreme leader, Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada, visited Dasht-e-Leili on the first day of his trip to Sheberghan, where he offered prayers for their fighters who died there.
Dasht-e-Leili, located in the Jowzjan province of northern Afghanistan, is infamous for being the site of a mass killing of Taliban fighters in December 2001. The accounts of what transpired vary widely; some sources claim several hundred Taliban prisoners were killed, while others estimate that thousands of Taliban fighters died in the desolate area known as Dasht-e-Leili in Jowzjan province.
Reports suggest that this massacre was carried out by forces loyal to Marshal Abdul Rashid Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek warlord associated with the Junbish Party, during the time when Taliban prisoners were being transferred from Kunduz to Sheberghan. However, Marshal Dostum denied these allegations in 2009. That same year, then U.S. President Barack Obama ordered an investigation into the incident, but detailed findings have yet to be released to the public.
The Taliban stated that Mullah Hibatullah visited Dasht-e-Leili to offer "prayers" for their fallen fighters. Following this, he also visited Ashraf-ul-Madaris, a seminary dedicated to the martyrs of Dasht-e-Leili. Taliban sources added that Mullah Hibatullah met with all civil and military officials in Jowzjan and provided them with important directives, though no further details about these directives were disclosed.
