ABC Home | Radio | Television | News | Your Local ABC | More Subjects… | Shop

Email

Three international aid workers, 1 Afghan killed near Kabul

Posted August 13, 2008 20:28:00

Three female international aid workers and their Afghan colleague have been killed when gunmen opened fire on their car in Logar province near Kabul, a provincial police chief said.

The aid workers were driving to the capital when they came under attack from gunmen on a road near the town of Pul-i-Alam, Logar police chief Ghulam Mustafa said.

A car had cut in front of them and then opened fire, the police chief said.

"Three females, foreign nationals, and an Afghan male have been killed," he told AFP. "Police went to the site and evacuated their bodies."

The provincial governor, Abdullah Wardak, confirmed the incident.

"Three women and an Afghan man have been killed. They were coming from Gardez and it happened along the road," he said.

Interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary also said "three foreign nationals and a man have been killed by unknown gunmen in an area just outside Pul-i-Alam."

The international group said to employ the four could not be reached for confirmation.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the incident, the deadliest in years involving international aid workers.

Taliban insurgents regularly carry out attacks across the country but bandits and other criminals are also behind a growing wave of violence.

Aid workers said in a report this month that 19 aid workers had been killed in Afghanistan this year with spreading insecurity cutting back relief work.

"Aid organisations and their staff have been subject to increasing attacks, threats and intimidation, by both insurgent and criminal groups," the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief said in a statement on August 1.

"This year there have been over 84 such incidents, including 21 in June, more than in any other month in the last six years.

"So far this year 19 NGO staff have been killed, which already exceeds the total number of NGO workers killed last year."

- AFP

Tags: unrest-conflict-and-war, murder-and-manslaughter, afghanistan