Taliban ban Afghan women from gyms

Gyms and public baths are now also off limits to Afghan women, the Taliban confirmed yesterday, days after banning them from parks and funfairs. Women are increasingly being squeezed out of public life since the Taliban's return last year despite the hardline Islamists promising a softer version of the harsh rule that characterised their first stint in power that ended in 2001.  "Gyms are closed for women because their trainers were male and some of them were combined gyms," Mohammad Akif Sadeq Mohajir, spokesman for the Ministry for the Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue, told AFP. He said "hammams" -- traditional public bathing houses that have always been segregated by sex -- were now also off limits. "Currently, every house has a bathroom in it, so it won't be any issue for the women," he said. One video clip circulating on social media -- which could not immediately be verified -- showed a group of women, backs to the camera, lamenting the gym ban. "It's a women-only gym -- the teachers and trainers are all women," a voice says, breaking with emotion.