5 Afghan UN workers missing in northern Afghanistan

5 Afghan UN workers missing in north

KABUL — The United Nations said five of its Afghan employees were missing Friday amid reports their vehicles were hijacked in the same northern province where fierce fighting killed four German soldiers and three Afghan police the previous day.

Word of the U.N. workers’ disappearance in Baghlan province followed twin bombings Thursday targeting foreign companies in the southern city of Kandahar that killed at least three people.

A Baghlan police official said the U.N. employees had been kidnapped by Taliban insurgents. Dan McNorton, a spokesman for the world body in Kabul, said only that the five Afghans, who worked for the U.N. Office for Project Services, were missing.

“The U.N. is working with the Afghan authorities to ascertain their current whereabouts and the exact circumstances of the situation,” McNorton said.

Baghlan’s deputy police chief, Zalmay Mangal, said Taliban operatives hijacked the workers’ vehicles Thursday and the U.N. employees were being held in Dahana-i-Ghori district of Baghlan province. Afghan police have asked tribal elders in the area to help ensure the workers’ safety, he said.

Baghlan, about 120 miles (190 kilometers) north of the capital, was the site of intense fighting Thursday between international forces and Taliban militants.

Three of the German soldiers were killed when a rocket slammed into their Eagle armored vehicle, while the fourth died when a grenade was tossed into another vehicle while it was parked, the German Defense Ministry said. It said the soldiers ranged in age from 24 to 38. Another five German soldiers were wounded.

It was the biggest single-day loss of life suffered by the Germans since June 2003, when four soldiers were killed and 29 wounded in a bombing near Kabul airport.

Baghlan provincial police spokesman Habib Rahman said three Afghan policemen also were killed in Thursday’s fighting, which included airstrikes and heavy weapons.

Fighting in the north has proved an increasing distraction from NATO’s main forces on Kandahar, the largest city in southern Afghanistan. The city is the spiritual heartland of the Taliban and NATO forces are gearing up for a major operation to drive out insurgents and assert central government control.

The Thursday night attacks on a hotel and compound housing foreign companies in Kandahar showed enduring gaps in security despite a boost in police deployments and traffic checkpoints. The Taliban maintains a visible presence in large swaths of the region and parts of the city remain no-go areas for security forces, especially after dark.

On March 13, a suicide squad detonated bombs at a newly fortified prison, police headquarters and two other locations in a failed attempt to free Taliban prisoners. At least 30 people died in the blasts.

Three people, all Afghans, were killed in Thursday night’s attack in which a suicide bomber detonated his explosives-laden vehicle at the inner security barrier of a compound shared by several Western companies.

Another 26 people were injured, 10 of them foreigners, including three Americans and a South African, Kandahar’s provincial governor Tooryalai Wesa told reporters on Friday. He said he didn’t know the nationalities of the other foreigners.

An initial report Thursday said three foreigners had been killed in the attack, but Wesa said that was not true and there was no corroboration that any foreigners had died.

NATO said 10 of the wounded were evacuated to its hospital in Kandahar, but gave no information on their nationalities or medical status.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai denounced the violence, saying such attacks have “repeatedly shown the terrorists’ hostility toward innocent Afghan civilians and intention to keep the people of Kandahar in an atmosphere of fear.”

The blast at the compound blew out windows as far as 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) away, including those at the home of Ahmad Wali Karzai, a high-ranking official in Kandahar and the Afghan president’s half brother. The compound includes the offices of the international contracting company Louis Berger Group, the Afghanistan Stabilization Initiative and the aid contracting company Chemonics International.

Earlier Thursday, a remotely detonated car bomb went off in front of the Noor Jehan Hotel, which includes the offices of several foreign news organizations, wounding eight people and shattering windows in the four-story building.

Karzai said the 2,000 additional police pledged after last month’s deadly bombings were sufficient, but he called for better intelligence to obtain inside knowledge of insurgent planning.

The U.S. Embassy on Friday condemned the latest bombings.

“Those killed and injured last night were in Afghanistan tirelessly working to deliver much-needed development, economic opportunity and electricity to the people of Kandahar,” the embassy said in a statement. “The terrorists who carried out this attack are clearly not interested in improving the lives of Kandaharis.”

Elsewhere on Friday morning, 10 insurgents were killed in a firefight with an Afghan police patrol in western Farah province’s Pusht Rod district, according to the provincial police chief, Mohammad Faqir Askar. He said the dead included two Taliban commanders. One Afghan police officer was killed and two were wounded along with one civilian.

Noor Khan reported from Kandahar.