On August 8, 1998, Taliban fighters captured the city of Mazar-e-Sharif in northern Afghanistan after a successful offensive against the United Front opposition forces. In the hours after seizing control of the city, Taliban troops killed scores of civilians through indiscriminate attacks, shooting noncombatants and suspected combatants alike in residential areas and public spaces. Hundreds of people, mostly Hazara civilians, were killed as the panicked population attempted to flee or evade the gunfire. In the following days, Taliban forces carried out systematic searches for male members of Hazara ethnic groups like the Hazara in mostly Hazara-dominated neighborhoods.

Thousands of Hazara men and boys were summarily executed during these house-to-house searches, seemingly to eliminate any potential resistance preemptively. The Hazaras, mainly a Shi'a Persian-speaking ethnic group, were specifically targeted, likely due to both their ethnicity and religious identity viewed as heretical by the fundamentalist Sunni Taliban. Thousands more men were detained and transported in cramped container trucks to jails in other cities, with many dying of asphyxiation or heat stroke during transit. Though precise totals are unknown, Human Rights Watch believes at least 2,000 civilians may have been killed in Mazar during this period. However, according to some other sources, including local victims’ families, 5000-8000 people were killed or disappeared.

The killings of Hazara civilians appear to have been retaliatory for the deaths of thousands of Taliban prisoners after an earlier failed 1997 offensive to capture Mazar, for which the Taliban blamed the Hazara fighters. Reports also indicate that girls and women, particularly from Hazara neighborhoods, were raped, abducted, and disappeared by Taliban forces during the takeover of the city. While local Pashtun militias, including Hizb-i Islami fighters, collaborated with the Taliban assault as well as in identifying local Hazara populations. Witnesses state senior Taliban leaders, including Mullah Abdul Manan Niazi, were involved in overseeing and permitting g the atrocities to continue for several days.

According to Human Rights Watch, Mulla Manon Niazi delivered speeches at mosques throughout the city, sometimes several in one day, threatening Hazaras for being Shia and urging them to convert, leave Afghanistan, or face death and warn other residents that they would also be punished if they protected Hazaras.