<p>Two men have been arrested for slitting the throat of a 15-year-old Afghan girl after her family refused a marriage proposal, police said.<br /><br /></p>.<p>The girl was carrying water from a river to her village home in northern Kunduz province yesterday when she was murdered, police spokesman Sayed Sarwar Hussaini told AFP today.<br /><br />"The two men attacked her and slit her throat with a knife," he said. "They were arrested and are in police custody."<br /><br />Hussaini said one of the suspects had proposed marriage to the girl but her family had rejected the offer.<br /><br />Extreme violence against women and girls remains a major problem in the conservative Muslim nation more than a decade after US led troops brought down the notoriously brutal Taliban Islamist regime.<br /><br />According to figures by British charity organisation Oxfam, 87 per cent of Afghan women report having experienced physical, sexual or psychological violence or forced marriage.<br /><br />Last month a 20-year-old woman was beheaded by her husband's family in the western province of Herat after she refused to become a prostitute, police said. Four people were arrested over the brutal killing.<br /><br />And in September, five people were arrested over the public flogging of a 16-year-old girl for allegedly having an affair.<br /><br />The girl was whipped 100 times in front of village elders and family members in central Ghazni province. Her alleged boyfriend was fined.<br /><br />Unmarried girls are often confined to the home and forbidden from maintaining any contact with men outside the immediate family. <br /></p>
<p>Two men have been arrested for slitting the throat of a 15-year-old Afghan girl after her family refused a marriage proposal, police said.<br /><br /></p>.<p>The girl was carrying water from a river to her village home in northern Kunduz province yesterday when she was murdered, police spokesman Sayed Sarwar Hussaini told AFP today.<br /><br />"The two men attacked her and slit her throat with a knife," he said. "They were arrested and are in police custody."<br /><br />Hussaini said one of the suspects had proposed marriage to the girl but her family had rejected the offer.<br /><br />Extreme violence against women and girls remains a major problem in the conservative Muslim nation more than a decade after US led troops brought down the notoriously brutal Taliban Islamist regime.<br /><br />According to figures by British charity organisation Oxfam, 87 per cent of Afghan women report having experienced physical, sexual or psychological violence or forced marriage.<br /><br />Last month a 20-year-old woman was beheaded by her husband's family in the western province of Herat after she refused to become a prostitute, police said. Four people were arrested over the brutal killing.<br /><br />And in September, five people were arrested over the public flogging of a 16-year-old girl for allegedly having an affair.<br /><br />The girl was whipped 100 times in front of village elders and family members in central Ghazni province. Her alleged boyfriend was fined.<br /><br />Unmarried girls are often confined to the home and forbidden from maintaining any contact with men outside the immediate family. <br /></p>