KABUL: A roadside bomb killed an Afghan archaeologist near an ancient Buddhist excavation site, also home to the country’s largest copper reserve, raising concerns about increasing threats to government-backed projects, officials said on Sunday.

Security threats by insurgents have forced European and US archaeologists to pull out of the Mes Aynak site in recent years, leaving Afghan experts to pursue the work on their own and try to prevent rampant illegal mining.

Saturday’s attack woun­ded four employees of the cultural ministry near the excavation site, 40 km south of the capital, home to the remains of 5,000-year-old temples, residential areas, markets and a fortress. No group has claimed responsibility.

“We never thought such action would be taken against us, because we are neither military nor high-ranking government officials,” said archaeologist Mohammad Rabi Saber, a colleague of the victims. “But after this incident, a kind of fear has spread among the archaeology staff members.”

In 2008, a Chinese company, Metallurgical Corporation of China, was awarded a contract to recover copper from Mes Aynak but a series of protests to protect the Buddhist site stalled the project.

The archaeologist who was killed, Abdul Wahab Ferozi, oversaw the repairs of more than 3,000 antiques from Mes Aynak that were handed to the National Museum in Kabul.

Published in Dawn, June 4th, 2018