KABUL, June 14: The bodies of 11 Chinese workers killed in a suspected militant attack last week were flown back to China on Monday after a solemn ceremony at Kabul airport.
The attack last Thursday in the northern province of Kunduz was the worst on foreigners since the Taliban's overthrow in 2001 and another shock to those working to reconstruct Afghanistan after decades of war and to organize September elections.
Afghan soldiers carried the 11 coffins draped with the red Chinese flag on to a specially chartered Air China cargo plane for their flight home. China's official Xinhua news agency said there would be a receiving ceremony in Nanchang, capital of the eastern province of Jiangxi, where 10 of the workers were from.
Chinese officials, led by ambassador Sun Yuxi and executives of the firm implementing a World Bank-funded road project that employed the eleven attended the brief ceremony at Kabul airport.
The men were shot while sleeping in their tents outside Kunduz. China denounced it as an act of terrorism and urged the Afghan government to bring those responsible to justice.
On Sunday, Kunduz military commander General Dawood said ten militants linked to a faction of a fundamentalist warlord and his Taliban allies were being held over the killing.
The men were detained in different parts of Kunduz and were connected to the Hezb-i-Islami faction of former prime minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and his Taliban guerrilla allies, he said.
More than 800 people have been killed, most in militant-related violence, since August, the bloodiest period since the Taliban's fall. The attack on the workers was a further blow to efforts to reconstruct and provide essential aid to the war-battered country. -Reuters
