Updated at 11:25 a.m. ET: KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai accused the Taliban on Monday of beheading 17 villagers, including two women, in volatile Helmand province, in a gruesome attack recalling the dark days of the hardline group's rule before their 2001 ouster.

He ordered a full investigation into the "mass killing," which a local official said was punishment to revelers attending a party with music and mixed-sex dancing.

"This attack shows that there are irresponsible members among the Taliban," Karzai said in a statement.

In a separate incident, a rogue Afghan soldier killed two American troops in eastern Laghman, the NATO-led coalition said; 10 Afghan army soldiers were also killed in an attack on a checkpoint in Helmand, the Afghan government said. 

 The Taliban denied they had taken part in the beheadings, which Karzai's office said took place in Kajaki district in the southern province. 

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"The victims were killed for throwing a late night dancing and music party when the Taliban attacked," Nimatullah, governor for neighboring Musa Qala district, told Reuters.

The beheaded bodies were found in a house near the Musa Qala district, about 46 miles north of the provincial capital Lashkar Gah, said Nimatullah, who only goes by one name.

The attack involving gunfire happened Sunday in a Taliban-controlled area of the province, the Interior Ministry told The Associated Press.

In ultra-conservative Afghanistan, men and women do not usually mingle unless they are related, and parties involving both genders together are rare and highly secretive affairs.

For the Taliban, flirting, open displays of affection and the mixing of men and women are vehemently condemned.

According to witnesses of a major attack that killed 20 near Kabul in June, Taliban gunmen stormed a high-end hotel demanding to know where the "prostitutes and pimps" were. 

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During their five-year reign, which was toppled by U.S.-backed Afghan forces in 2001, sparking the present NATO-led war, the Taliban banned women from voting, holding most jobs and leaving their home unaccompanied by their husband or a male relative.

Though those rights have been painstakingly regained, Afghanistan remains one of the worst places on earth to be a woman. 

American soldiers shot
The two U.S. troops killed in east Afghanistan on Monday were the latest in a series of insider killings that have strained trust between the allies ahead of a 2014 pullout by foreign combat troops.

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The deaths in Laghman province brought to 12 the number of foreign soldiers killed this month, prompting NATO to increase security against insider attacks, including requiring soldiers to carry loaded weapons at all times on base.

The deaths also come a week after U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Martin Dempsey visited Kabul to talk about rogue shootings and urge Afghan officials to take tougher preventative action.

"ISAF troops returned fire, killing the ANA (Afghan National Army) soldier who committed the attack,'' the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said in a statement.

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There have been 33 insider attacks so far this year that have led to 42 coalition deaths. That is a sharp increase from 2011, when, during the whole year, 35 coalition troops were killed in such attacks, 24 of whom were American.

Afghan soldiers killed
On Sunday, insurgents killed 10 Afghan soldiers and wounded four in an attack on a checkpoint in volatile southern Helmand province, provincial officials said.

Ahmadi, the provincial government spokesman, said insurgents attacked the checkpoint in Washir district Sunday evening. 

Ahmadi did not provide details of the attack. He added that that the five missing soldiers left with their assailants but it was unclear if they were kidnapped or went voluntarily.

NBC News' Atia Abawi, and Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

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The Taliban released a video Wednesday that they say shows the heads of 17 Pakistani soldiers captured in a cross-border raid from Afghanistan this week and then beheaded.

Meanwhile, a bomb in a railway station in Pakistan's southwest killed at least five people, police said.

A senior security official in Peshawar on Wednesday told the AFP the soldiers were targeted by attackers from the eastern Afghan province of Kunar in a raid that began Sunday night.

“Six troops were killed on the first day, then another seven were slaughtered the next day,” the official told AFP.

“Four were missing and now they have also been beheaded,” he said.

The Pakistani Taliban's bloody cross-border raid showed the threat still posed by the group, despite multiple army offensives. Increasingly, the militants have used sanctuaries in eastern Afghanistan to attack border areas in Pakistan's northwest.

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Pakistan has criticized NATO and Afghan forces for not doing enough to stop the attacks, but it has received little sympathy. The Afghan government and its allies have long faulted Pakistan for failing to target Afghan Taliban militants and their allies who use Pakistani territory to launch attacks in Afghanistan.

The Pakistani and Afghan Taliban are allies, but the former has focused on fighting the Pakistani government, while the latter has concentrated on attacking foreign and local forces in Afghanistan.

The Pakistani Taliban said in the video that they killed 18 soldiers, but 17 heads were displayed on a bloody white sheet on the ground. Several militants whose faces were covered were standing around the heads, holding weapons they said were captured from the soldiers.

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The Associated Press, which also reported the killings, said it obtained the video by email Wednesday from Pakistani Taliban spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan.

“God has given us a great victory, we have killed them all. Four of the heads you can see are from Frontier Corps (paramilitary force), the rest are from the army,” an unseen commentator said in the video, according to the AFP report.

At the beginning of the video, a voice identified as that of Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud says the militants will continue to battle the army until Pakistan's government stops supporting the U.S. and enforces Islamic law throughout the country. It was unclear when the message was recorded.

The Pakistani military said previously that 13 troops were killed in the cross-border raid into the country's northwest Upper Dir region, and seven of them were beheaded. Four others were reported missing at the time. The military did not immediately respond to request for comment on the video.

The Pakistani Taliban and their allies have staged scores of bombings and other attacks against security forces and civilians in the country, killing thousands.

The railway station bombed Wednesday was located in Sibbi city in Baluchistan province, said police official Qasim Salachi. In addition to the five killed, 20 others were wounded, he said. The bomb went off just after a train had pulled into the station, and passengers were buying drinks and food.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack. Baluchistan has experienced decades of violence at the hands of separatists who demand a greater share of the province's natural resources. It is also believed to be a base of many Afghan Taliban militants.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Alejandro Acosta / Reuters

Forensic technicians handle bags containing human remains found in two abandoned vehicles near Guadalajara, Mexico, on Thursday.

MEXICO CITY -- Police found the decapitated and dismembered bodies of 18 people near Mexico's second-largest city, Guadalajara, on Wednesday, in what appeared to be the latest atrocity by the country's most brutal drug cartel. 

Thought to have been carried out by the Zetas gang, it was one of the biggest mass beheadings in the recent history of Mexico, where decapitations have become alarmingly common.

The bodies and heads were stuffed into two vehicles abandoned on the side of a highway in the small town of Ixtlahuacan de los Membrillos, said Tomas Coronado, chief prosecutor for the state of Jalisco. 

Ixtlahuacan de los Membrillos is located 18 miles south of the center of Guadalajara on the road to Lake Chapala, a site popular with foreign tourists and U.S. retirees.

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Some of the bodies had been refrigerated before they were dumped, Coronado said.

A policeman at the scene in Ixtlahuacan said some victims had been so badly mutilated that officers could not determine whether they were male or female.

The officer said a note by the bodies was signed by the Zetas cartel, a criminal militia led by former Mexican soldiers and blamed for some of the worst atrocities in Mexico's drug war.

Cross-border methamphetamine trade booms amid Mexico's 'war on drugs'

"They are clearly messages between rival groups that are in conflict," Coronado told The Associated Press.

The AP reported that the vehicles, described as minivans, were towed to government offices to unload the bodies.

Guadalajara, known for its high-tech industry, mariachi bands and tequila, has been a strategic base for drug traffickers since the 1980s. 

Violence has flared in the once-tranquil city as the Zetas moved in to challenge the smuggling turf of other gangs in western Mexico.

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Soldiers arrested a high-ranking member of the powerful Sinaloa cartel in the city in March, causing his supporters to block streets with 25 burning cars and trucks.

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Mexico's drug war is also part of a drug culture with roots in music, movies and even religion.

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Attacks between the Zetas and their rivals have flared up across Mexico since the beginning of the year. 

On Friday, nine corpses were hanged from a bridge in the border city of Nuevo Laredo just hours before 14 bodies were dismembered and shoved into garbage bags and ice boxes. 

Five days of intense battles in western Sinaloa state last week also left 34 dead, adding to the body count in Mexico's drug war, which has killed more than 50,000 people in the past five years.

Msnbc.com staff and Reuters contributed to this report.

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