Afghan kidnappers kill Bangladeshi engineer
Kidnappers killed a Bangladeshi engineer working in Afghanistan and abducted two road workers after storming their camp at gunpoint, officials said yesterday.
The incident happened in the north, where Taliban insurgents are increasingly active as Nato has opened up new supply lines, and in an area adjacent to where German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited yesterday.
"Seven Afghan and Bangladeshi road construction workers were kidnapped last night," said Shirjan Duranai, spokesman for the police in Balkh province.
"One Bangladeshi was killed, four workers escaped, while two are still hostages."
The nationality of those still being held hostage is not clear, he said, adding that police had launched an investigation.
The workers were employed by South Korean company, the country's embassy in Kabul confirmed to AFP. An official there added that their information was that seven people, all Bangladeshis, were still unaccounted for.
No South Korean workers were harmed in the incident and the company has decided to bring its workers back home following the attack, a South Korean foreign ministry spokeswoman told AFP.
The incident took place on a remote road being constructed between the northern provinces of Samangan and Balkh.
One local official said the gunmen burst into a road construction camp, killing the Bangladeshi immediately and then kidnapping the others.
"Last night at 8:00 pm (1530 GMT), unknown gunmen entered a road construction camp, killing one Bangladeshi on the spot and snatching away seven other workers including an Afghan guard," said Enayatullah Zafar, the head of Balkh's public works directorate.
Given the remoteness of the location, police say it is not yet clear whether the body of the dead man has been recovered or not.
Kidnappings in the area are sometimes linked to the Taliban but can also be related to gangs hoping to secure ransom payments.
Criminal groups and insurgents have kidnapped several dozen foreigners in Afghanistan since the 2001 US-led invasion ousted the Taliban regime in Kabul. Most of the hostages are released safe and well.
Most abductions of foreigners in Afghanistan are carried out by criminal gangs, who then sell their hostages to Taliban insurgents fighting against the Western-backed government and foreign troops.
Earlier this month, two South Korean construction workers were rescued after being briefly kidnapped by unidentified attackers in northern Afghanistan.
Apart from civilian companies, South Korea has a team of reconstruction workers and troops tasked with protecting them in the country.
In October, a Dutch aid worker and his Afghan driver were snatched at gunpoint while driving through northern Afghanistan's remote Takhar province. The Dutch government announced on December 2 that they had been freed.
In the last two years, northern Afghanistan has been increasingly affected by the Taliban insurgency that was previously confined to Pashtun-dominated areas in the east and south of the country.
Merkel visited German troops on Saturday and said publicly for the first time that they were fighting a war.
She addressed German soldiers on a surprise visit to Kunduz province, which neighbours the province where the Bangladeshi engineer was killed.
She went on to Mazar-i-Sharif, the de facto northern capital, for talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and US General David Petraeus, commander of the roughly 140,000 NATO troops fighting the Taliban.
"What we have here is not just a warlike situation," she told the troops in Kunduz. "You are involved in combat as in war."
Opinion polls suggest that a majority of Germans are opposed to the Afghan mission and the deployment of combat troops is controversial in a country where the legacy of World War II still colours political discourse.
Foreign office in the dark
Our staff correspondent adds, Mehedi Hasan, director of SAARC at the foreign ministry in Dhaka, said the ministry last night contacted the Bangladesh missions in Delhi, Islamabad and Uzbekistan, but nothing could be learnt about the incident.
In October 2008, a criminal gang abducted Mohammad Shahjahan Ali and Akhter Ali, two officials of Brac in Ghazni, southwest of Afghan capital Kabul.
Unnamed gunmen killed Abdul Alim, another official of the NGO, in September 2007.
Nurul Islam, another Brac official, was abducted from his office by unknown gunmen in Loger province of the country a few days later.
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