A UN human rights team rushed to central Afghanistan's Bamiyan Province today to investigate three mass graves local residents say are filled with people killed about a month before the Taliban were toppled in December.
United Nations spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva said the mass graves were found on Friday night near the airport of the provincial capital of Bamiyan, 125 km (80 miles) northwest of Kabul.
They have been cordoned off until the arrival of a team that includes the UN human rights adviser, the UN police adviser and officials from Afghanistan's Interior Ministry, he told a news conference.
"We do not yet know the number of bodies or exactly when they were buried. These graves were unknown until now," he said.
It is the first time in the nearly five months since the fall of the Taliban that the United Nations has swung into action to investigate possible war crimes in Afghanistan.