KABUL, June 10: Eleven Chinese construction workers were gunned down in their sleep on Thursday in a usually peaceful area of northeastern Afghanistan in the worst attack on foreigners since the fall of the Taliban regime.

Around 20 armed men stormed a compound housing Chinese workers building a road in Kunduz province, 250 kilometres north of Kabul, and opened fire on the workers with automatic weapons, the Chinese embassy said.

The night-time killing was the second murder of foreigners in a week in northern Afghanistan, until now considered free of the bloody insurgency wracking the south and southeast.

Hours after the killings a bomb, believed to be planted for UN vehicles, exploded on the main road joining the Kunduz and Takhar provinces. It caused no casualties or damage, provincial military spokesman Jan Agha said.

The Chinese embassy in Kabul described the raid as a "terrorist attack", while Gen Daud blamed "the enemies of Afghanistan, Taliban and Al Qaeda". The violence was the work of Taliban, Al Qaeda and their allies, acting President Mohammed Qasim Fahim said.

"The acting president... considers the killings an inhumane act of those who try to place obstacles in the way of the reconstruction of Afghanistan and considers the network of Taliban, Al Qaeda and their allies behind the incident," he said in a statement.

Mr Fahim, who is also the defence minister, offered no evidence for his accusation. The attackers were armed with machine guns and AK-47s and travelled in two small vehicles, a Corolla and a stationwagon, interior ministry spokesman Lutfullah Marshal said.

The site, some 36 kilometres south of Kunduz city in Jalawgeer district, was home to around 100 Chinese workers who are building a road for the China Railway Construction Shisiju Group Corporation.

Most of those killed had only arrived in Kunduz 24 hours earlier, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman in Beijing said. The embassy was still trying to identify the victims.

"They were shot in their sleep. They were not protected," Liu Jianchao said. Chinese President Hu Jintao condemned the slaying as "inhumane" but said it would not halt his country's participation in the reconstruction of war-ruined Afghanistan. -AFP