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KABUL: Taliban authorities have arrested 14 people in northern Afghanistan for playing musical instruments and singing, activities they restricted since taking power, provincial police said on Saturday.

The Taliban government has steadily imposed laws and regulations that reflect their austere vision of Islamic law since seizing power in 2021.

This includes cracking down on music in public, from live performances to playing at gatherings, in restaurants, in cars or on radio and TV.

The police said in a statement that on Thursday night in the capital of northern Takhar province “fourteen individuals... took advantage of the nighttime to gather in a residential house where they were playing musical instruments and singing songs, which caused disturbance to the public.”

Those detained were under investigation, it added.

After their takeover, Taliban authorities shuttered music schools and smashed or burned musical instruments and sound systems, saying music caused “moral corruption” and public disturbance.

Wedding halls are no longer allowed to play music, though segregated women’s sections often do so secretly.

Many Afghan musicians fled the Taliban takeover out of fear or in need of work after losing their livelihoods in one of the world’s poorest countries.

The Taliban authorities have encouraged former musicians to turn their talents to Islamic poetry and unaccompanied vocal chants — the only forms of music allowed under their previous rule from 1996-2001.

KANO: Nigeria’s northeastern state of Borno, the epicenter of the militant insurgency, on Saturday said it was banning the sale of petrol in a bid to curtail a resurgence of militant attacks.

“I have directed the immediate ban on the sale of petrol in Bama town, ...and other parts of Bama Local Government Area with immediate effect,” Borno state governor Babagana Umara Zulum was quoted as saying in a statement issued by his office.

The ban is part of the “state government’s strategic response to counter insurgency operations,” the statement added.

The cutting of fuel supplies for vehicles is expected to restrict the militants’ mobility.

The town targeted by the ban is the largest after the state capital Maiduguri, and sits on the fringes of Sambisa forest, a major enclave of the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), a splinter group of Boko Haram.

The town witnessed the worst devastation by Boko Haram militants who seized it in 2014 and killed hundreds of residents.

Northeastern Nigeria has seen an upsurge in Islamist militant attacks in recent weeks, reigniting a grinding 16-year conflict that has left more than 40,000 dead and displaced some two million people.

More than 100 people have been killed in the region since April.

The state of Borno in particular, where the Boko Haram militant group emerged 16 years ago, remains the epicenter of the conflict in Africa’s most populous country.