Picture used for illustrative purposes only.

Taliban authorities in the western Afghan city of Herat killed four alleged kidnappers and hung their bodies up in public in a gruesome display to deter others, a local government official said on Saturday.

Sher Ahmad Ammar, deputy governor of Herat, said the men had kidnapped a local businessman and his son and intended to take them out of the city, when they were seen by patrols that had set up checkpoints around the city.

Taliban officials announced that the four were caught taking part in a kidnapping earlier on Saturday and were killed by police, Wazir Ahmad Seddiqi, who runs a pharmacy on the edge of the square, said.

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Taliban officials initially brought four bodies to the central square in the western city of Herat, then moved three of them to other parts of the city for public display. The two kidnapping victims were released unharmed, Seddiqi said.

Herat resident Mohammad Nazir said he had been shopping for food near the city's Mostofiat Square when he heard a loudspeaker announcement calling for people's attention.

"When I stepped forward, I saw they had brought a body in a pickup truck, then they hung it up on a crane," he said.

Also Saturday, a roadside bomb hit a Taliban car in the capital of eastern Nangarhar province, wounding at least one person, a Taliban official said. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing. The Daesh group affiliate, which is headquartered in eastern Afghanistan, has said it was behind similar attacks in Jalalabad last week that killed 12 people.

The person wounded in the attack is a municipal worker, Taliban spokesperson Mohammad Hanif said.