September 23, 2008	Tuesday	Ramazan 22, 1429

HERAT, Sept 22: Suspected Taliban militants kidnapped more than 150 civilian labourers as they travelled by bus in Afghanistan while a bomb blast on Monday killed six civilians, authorities said.

The labourers were kidnapped on Sunday as they were driving in three buses through the southwestern province of Farah, Afghan authorities said.

“About 156 workers who were travelling in three buses were captured by Taliban and are still being held by them,” an army colonel in Farah province, Farooq Na’emi, told AFP.

“They were working for a construction company which is contracted to build facilities for the Afghan National Army,” he said.

The provincial governor, Roh-Ul Ameen, confirmed the abduction. “One hundred and fifty workers and three drivers have been taken hostage by Taliban since yesterday. They were driving in three buses to Herat,” he said.

“We are trying through tribal elders to secure their release.”

A spokesman for the group, Yousuf Ahmadi, told AFP however that he had not yet heard from Taliban in the area.

The bombing that killed six Afghan civilians was in Uruzgan.

Women and a 12-year-old boy were killed when the pick-up they were travelling in hit a bomb, provincial police chief Juma Gul Hemat told AFP.

They were going to the provincial capital Tirin Kot to shop for the Eid holidays, he said, blaming the blast on the “enemies of Afghanistan”.

The government of Wardak, near Kabul, said there had been a similar bomb blast against ISAF soldiers in the province and they had had suffered casualties.

In other violence, Taliban militants attacked police posts in the town of Zaranj on the border with Iran early Monday and were repelled, Nimroz province governor Ghulam Dastgir Azad said.

“Nine Taliban were killed and five others were injured. Three police were also injured,” he said.—AFP