DHAKA: Bangladesh on Monday appealed for the release of a development worker kidnapped at the weekend in Afghanistan by suspected criminals.

“We fervently appeal to those who have abducted him to immediately release (him),” interim foreign minister Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury said in a statement.

“His mission in Afghanistan is purely humanitarian -- he is there only to help his Afghan brethren,” Chowdhury said after meeting Afghanistan’s ambassador to Dhaka, Ahmad Karim Nawabi.

The envoy assured him of the Afghan government’s “all-out cooperation” in obtaining the worker’s release, the statement added.

The 39-year-old worker, identified as Nurul Islam, works on a micro-finance project run by the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, an aid group in Afghanistan since 2002 that builds schools and clinics.

Afghan police said Monday they had arrested three men in connection with Saturday’s kidnapping. Crime has soared in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban government in 2001, with regular reports of Afghans kidnapped by ransom-seekers.

A string of Afghans and foreign nationals have also been abducted by Taliban insurgents, who have killed several of their hostages —mostly Afghans — and tried to use them to barter with the government.

The Al-Qaeda-linked insurgents said this month the kidnapping of foreign nationals was an effective way to put political pressure on Kabul.—AFP