A British aid worker, two German soldiers and five Afghan children were killed in Afghanistan on Monday. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the killings.A 17-year-old meanwhile narrated how he had survived after he was forced to kneel in a ditch with five other men who were shot dead on Friday after being accused by the Taliban of being security force recruits.
President Hamid Karzai condemned the killing of aid worker Gayle Williams, who was shot dead in Kabul, as well as the German troops and children killed in a suicide attack in the north. In a statement, he said the murder of Williams, 34, who also had South African nationality, was cowardly and unforgivable.
The aid worker was gunned down as she walked to work at 'SERVE Afghanistan', a Britain-based Christian charity that helps disabled people. "Two armed men sitting on a motorbike shot her dead. Some bullets hit her body and some hit her leg and when police got there she was dead," Interior Ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary told AFP. The attackers had fled and their motive was unknown, he said.
The Taliban, which has carried out similar assassinations in Kandahar, said it was responsible. "We killed her because she was working for an organisation which was preaching Christianity in Afghanistan," spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told AFP by telephone.
SERVE Afghanistan rejected the charge of preaching. "We have a specific policy against proselytising," said the London-based chairman of the board, Mike Lyth.
| Doesn't matter. She's an infidel. |
In a hospital in the southern town of Gereshk in Helmand province meanwhile, an Afghan teenager described how he had hidden wounded among the corpses of five men shot dead by the Taliban after being accused of being police recruits. The youngster, known as Shukrullah, said he was among about 40 men pulled off a bus travelling through southern Afghanistan last week and split into smaller groups. "The Taliban made us kneel in a ditch and fired at us. Five other people who were with me died and I survived," he told AFP.
Police confirmed they had found five bodies after six others were discovered Sunday in Helmand. They believe around 30 men were killed; the Taliban has claimed to have killed 27.
In other incidents, 10 Taliban were reported killed in clashes, one near the town of Lashkar Gah. The Helmand government claimed 34 had been killed but the defence ministry said only six bodies were found.
Unknown assailants kidnapped a one-time Afghan presidential candidate and a relative of the late king near his home in Kabul, police said on Monday. Humayun Shah Asifi, who stood in the 2004 presidential elections won by Hamid Karzai, was snatched at gunpoint while returning home from a dinner late on Sunday, Kabul Police Deputy Chief Alishah Ahmadzai told AFP. There was no claim of responsibility for the abduction.
"Asifi was returning from a dinner at about 11pm. As he was near his home, four armed men kidnapped him. His driver and one of his servants were with him when he was kidnapped," Ahmadzai said. It was not known who might have been behind the abduction but kidnapping of wealthy Afghans or their relatives, most often for ransom, is rife in Kabul.