Taliban fighters beheaded two boys aged 10 and 16 as a warning to villagers not to cooperate with the Afghan government, local officials said.

The boys had travelled to Afghan army and police checkpoints near their home in the southern province of Kandahar, scrounging for leftover food to bring to their families, the officials said.

“The boys were on their way back ... when they were stopped by Taliban insurgents who beheaded them,” the chief of Zhari district, Jamal Agha, said.

“Both of them were innocent children and had nothing to do with government or foreigners.”

The militants have beheaded dozens of people in the past two years, accusing them of aiding the government and its foreign backers led by the US.

A Taliban spokesman said the group was not involved in the boys’ killings. In July last year in the same district, a 16-year-old boy accused by the Taliban of spying for the government was beheaded and skinned.