Lawmakers in the Afghan parliament have received anonymous threatening phone calls and text messages over the weekend from a new insurgent group calling on them to scrap the recently signed US-Afghanistan strategic partnership, officials said Sunday.
The group calls itself Mullah Dadullah Front - honouring the Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah who was killed in southern Afghanistan in a US-led operation in 2007, dpa reported.
The Front first came to public knowledge last week when they took responsibility for the murder of a former Taliban leader, Arsala Rahmani, who was working as one of the peace envoys for the Afghan government.
One lawmaker, Duad Hasas, a senator from the troubled southern province of Zabul, said the caller had threatened him with "Rahmani's fate" if he backed the US deal.
Hasas also said that around ten other lawmakers had received similar messages.
US President Barack Obama and the Afghan President Hamid Karzai signed the strategic partnership agreement when Obama visited Kabul on May 1. Later, the deal was sent to Afghan parliament to ratify.
The Taliban, who have been waging a deadly insurgency in Afghanistan for the past decade, disavowed their relationship with the Front.
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