KABUL, Dec 8: In another setback for efforts to rebuild Afghanistan, two Turkish engineers and an Afghan were kidnapped outside Kabul, officials said on Sunday, bringing to five the number of foreign company workers who have been taken hostage in the last three days.

Two Indian highway engineers were kidnapped on Saturday by suspected Taliban militants in southern Afghanistan.

On Sunday, Taliban spokesman Mullah Abdul Hakim Latifi claimed responsibility for that abduction. “Our people have taken the two Indian road workers and they are in our custody,” Latifi said in Kandahar by satellite telephone. “They are quite safe.” He set no conditions for their release.

Latifi, a former Taliban official, had accurately announced that Taliban had freed a Turkish road engineer after holding him hostage for a month.

On Friday, unidentified men burst into the office of a Turkish construction company southeast of the capital Kabul, beat and tied up an Afghan staff member, then abducted two Turkish workers and an Afghan one, said Nick Downie of the Afghanistan NGO Security Office, which protects aid workers in the country.

The three may have been taken from the Khak-i-Jabar area, 25 kilometers outside Kabul — where they were making new wells — to the neighboring province of Logar, Mr Downie said.

In Ankara, Turkish foreign ministry spokesman Huseyin Dirioz said the two Turks were found on Sunday. Afghan Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali said the government was negotiating for their release and they would be freed “soon.”—Agencies