Kandahar, Afghanistan ? Leaflets threatening parents who send their children to school were found in southern Kandahar, once the spiritual headquarters of the deposed Taliban religious militia, an Afghan official said Saturday.

Khalid Pashtun, spokesman for Gul Agha, the governor of Kandahar, called the leaflets an attempt to sabotage the interim regime.

The leaflets say parents who send their children to school will be killed and their homes burned down.

Security forces have made some arrests during an investigation into the leaflets, which surfaced in just the last few days, Pashtun said.

There was no indication who was distributing the leaflets, but Pashtun blamed either the ousted Taliban or supporters of former Afghan Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who has opposed U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Earlier this month the interim regime rounded up hundreds of people said to be Hekmatyar followers on charges they were plotting to overthrow the government – something a spokesman for Hekmatyar adamantly denied. Many of the people were later released, although some remain in custody.

Hekmatyar served as prime minister in the fractious Afghan government that took power after the demise of the pro-Moscow regime in 1992 and also included many who are now in the interim administration.

Hekmatyar fled to Iran after the Taliban took the capital in 1996, but the Iranian government recently closed his offices in Tehran and he has reportedly returned to Afghanistan.

Earlier this month, the U.S. military at Bagram air base said they had found pamphlets that offered rewards of up to dlrs 100,000 for the capture of any Westerner and dlrs 50,000 for anyone delivered dead. They blamed al-Qaida and Taliban supporters.

In March, a set of pamphlets circulating among Afghan refugees in Pakistan and in Afghanistan denounced the interim government as “traitors to Islam” and warned that those who fight alongside the Americans will someday “suffer the consequences.”

State-run Kandahar Radio, as well as a Pashto-language radio station operating out of the U.S. military base at the Kandahar airport, urged people to ignore the threats.

“Don’t worry. The Afghan government and the Afghan security forces will protect you. Nobody can do you harm,” an announcer said on Kandahar Radio.