According to a Taliban official, a Taliban fighter was detained for shooting dead a Hazara lady at a checkpoint in the Afghan capital on her way back from a wedding.
The assassination of Zainab Abdullahi, 25, has shocked women, who have faced increased restrictions since the Taliban retook control in August.
The killing occurred in a Kabul district mostly populated by members of the minority Shiite Hazara community, who have long been tormented by Sunni hardliners, with jihadist organizations such as the Islamic State often targeting them in lethal attacks.
Abdullahi was “killed by mistake,” Taliban spokesman Mohammad Naeem said on Twitter, adding the arrested fighter would be punished.
Her family has been offered 600,000 Afghani (around $5,700) for the January 13 shooting in the capital’s Dasht-e-Barchi neighborhood, the interior ministry said separately.
Some women’s rights activists have staged small protests in Kabul since Abdullahi’s killing, demanding justice.
The Taliban are increasingly imposing their hard-line interpretation of Islamic law on the country, and women are being squeezed out of public life.
Most secondary schools for girls are shut, while women are barred from all but essential government work.
They have also been ordered not to commute long distances unless accompanied by a close male relative.
Earlier this month, the Taliban’s religious police put up posters around the capital ordering women to cover up.
A spokesman for the feared Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice said it was “just encouragement for Muslim women to follow Sharia law.”
On Tuesday, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, urged the Security Council to “hold to account” those guilty of abuses in Afghanistan.
She said denying women and girls their fundamental rights was “massively damaging” a country already facing a humanitarian disaster of unprecedented proportions.
The Taliban have promised a softer version of the rule that characterized their first stint in power from 1996 to 2001, but their interim government has no female members.
