KABUL, Oct 20: The Taliban killed a Christian aid worker in Kabul on Monday that the militants accused of spreading her religion.

Violence around the country has spiked in recent days. Armed men kidnapped a former presidential candidate in Kabul, while a suicide bomber killed two German soldiers in the north and two operations by Afghan and NATO forces killed some 50 militants.

The aid worker — a dual South African-British national — helped handicapped Afghans. Two men on a motorbike shot her with a pistol as she was walking to work around 8am, said Interior Ministry spokesman Zemeri Bashary.

The Taliban claimed responsibility.

“This woman came to Afghanistan to teach Christianity to the people of Afghanistan,” militant spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid told The Associated Press. “Our (leaders) issued a decree to kill this woman.”

The woman’s aid group ‘Serve’ – Serving Emergency Relief and Vocational Enterprises — identified her as 34-year-old Gayle Williams.

The group describes itself as a Christian charity registered in Britain. The Serve says on its website it has been working with Afghan refugees since 1980 in Pakistan.

“Serve Afghanistan’s purpose is to express God’s love and bring hope by serving the people of Afghanistan, especially the needy, as we seek to address personal, social and environmental needs,” the site says.

Rina van der Ende, a spokeswoman for Serve in Kabul, said the group is a Christian organisation “but they are definitely not expressing this on purpose. They are here to do NGO (aid) work.”

A member of Afghanistan’s highest religious council said on Monday that rumours had spread around Afghanistan over the last two years that Westerners had been preaching Christianity to Afghans.

“We have heard rumours that houses have been rented to preach Christianity in Kabul and some provinces, but we have no evidence that this is taking place,” said council member Jebra Ali.

The council previously made a formal complaint to President Hamid Karzai that Westerners were trying to spread Christianity in Afghanistan.

Last year a group of 23 South Korean aid workers from a church group were taken hostage in southern Afghanistan. Two were killed and the rest were released.

In 2001, eight international aid workers, including two Americans, were imprisoned and charged with preaching Christianity. The eight were freed by the mujahideen fighters attacking the Taliban after the US-led invasion.

Elsewhere in Kabul, a car filled with gunmen kidnapped Humayun Assifi, a former presidential candidate, late Sunday, said Bashary.

To the west of Kabul, assault helicopters dropped Nato troops into Jalrez district in Wardak province on Thursday, sparking a two-day battle involving air strikes, the military alliance said in a statement Monday.

More than 20 militants were killed, Nato said.

Wardak province, just 60k west of Kabul, has become an insurgent stronghold. Militants have expanded their traditional bases in the country’s south and east — along the border with Pakistan — and have gained territory in the provinces surrounding Kabul.

In northern Afghanistan, a suicide bomber killed two German soldiers and five children on Monday in Kunduz province, said Mohammad Omar, the provincial governor.

In the south, an operation Sunday evening by international and Afghan forces killed 34 Taliban fighters south of the Helmand provincial capital of Lashkar Gah, said Daud Ahmadi, the governor’s spokesman.—AP