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Afghan police have arrested two men in the murder of a 15-year-old girl after her father refused a marriage proposal, the Telegraph reports.

The girl reportedly was collecting water from a stream in her village in northern Afghanistan when she was decapitated.

Police say one of the suspects recently proposed to marry the girl, but her father said she was too young to be engaged, the Telegraph reports.

"At this stage it looks like they wanted to marry her and the father refused, so they killed her," said police spokesman Syed Sarwar Hosseini, according to the Telegraph.

The two men were arrested on murder charges and remain in police custody, according to AFP.

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A similar attack occurred in 2011, when four men were arrested for allegedly breaking into an Afghan home and throwing corrosive acid on three girls after their father had refused a marriage proposal, according to the Guardian.

Violence against women and young girls remains a major issue in Afghanistan, a country once controlled by a brutal Taliban Islamist regime.

In 2009, The Elimination of Violence Against Women Law was passed in Afghanistan, making illegal child marriage, forced marriage, selling and buying women under the pretext of marriage and other acts of violence, according to International Business Times.

However, the law has been difficult to apply. Navi Pillay, the UN's high commissioner for human rights, says that although the law is gaining popularity, it still has not been fully implemented.

"Judges, prosecutors and police in many parts of Afghanistan have begun to use the new law, which is a positive development, but unfortunately only in a small percentage of violence against women cases," Pillay told the International Business Times.

Click for more from The Telegraph.