KABUL, March 24: Gunmen shot dead seven Afghan staff of UN-funded mine clearing teams in northern Afghanistan, their organisations said on Monday, in some of the deadliest attacks on non-government workers in months.
In one incident, unknown attackers halted a convoy of deminers returning from work in the province of Jawzjan on Sunday and opened fire, killing five and wounding seven, Afghan Technical Consultants said.
The gunmen shot into the first vehicle and then opened fire on the others, which included an ambulance, as they turned around and sped off, director Kefayatullah Eblagh said.
“Three people stopped the vehicle and started shooting at them without saying anything,” he said.
Some of the men were able to use demining equipment to shield themselves from the barrage of bullets, Eblagh said.
It was the worst attack on the company in its 18 years of operations in Afghanistan, he said. “It was terrible.” Two more employees of a separate mine clearing team, the Mine Detection and Dog Centre, were shot dead in the northern province of Kunduz on Monday, their organisation and the United Nations said.
The men — a deminer and a driver — were gunned down after returning from a ceremony to hand over land they had cleared of mines to a community, MDC’s deputy director, named only Enyatullah, said.
After nearly three decades of war, Afghanistan is one of the world’s most mined countries.
Several groups are working with UN and other international funding to rid the country of mines, which kill or maim scores of people every year.
Insurgents, mainly from the Taliban, have killed dozens of people associated with an internationally-funded drive to help Afghanistan rebuild, including non-government workers, doctors and teachers.
The head of a district in Jawzjan and a highway police commander in northern Kunduz were murdered over the weekend in incidents that the Taliban claimed to have carried out.
The Taliban reportedly denied involvement in the Jawzjan killngs, with a spokesman telling the Afghan Islamic Press news agency.—AFP
