KABUL, Oct 25: One British and one South African employee of the international courier company DHL, together with an Afghan guard, were killed in the heart of the Afghan capital on Saturday, officials said.

Police said they were questioning DHL employees but were not yet sure of the motive for the violence, which comes amid a rising tide of attacks and less than a week after Taliban militants killed a British aid worker in another part of Kabul.

“We can now confirm that a British and a South African national were killed in a shooting incident in Kabul,” said a British Foreign Office spokeswoman. “We are in contact with the Afghan police to establish the circumstances.”

Taliban militants have launched a number of attacks inside Kabul, but an Afghan Interior Ministry official said the Saturday shooting did not appear to be politically motivated. “It was an encounter between Afghan guards and foreigners of the company,” a ministry source said on condition of anonymity.

A spokesman for Deutsche Post, which owns DHL, confirmed that the attack took place at about 0830 local time outside the DHL offices in Kabul. The company was working with local authorities to find out what happened, he said.

Two Turkish engineers had been kidnapped in southeastern regions of the country, Afghan and Turkish officials said.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan, on a visit to the Afghan capital, said he had brought up the subject of the two missing engineers in a meeting with his Afghan counterpart Rangeen Dadfar Spanta.

“I expressed our worries over our citizens, who were kidnapped a few days ago and from whom we have not been able to get news, in my meeting today with Dr Spanta and we are sure that Afghan officials will show all necessary efforts in this case,” Babacan told a news conference.

“It is our strong desire and expectation as the Turkish Republic that our citizens should be returned to their homes and jobs in perfect health,” he said.

The two engineers were travelling on a road in the southeastern province of Khost on Thursday when they were seized by gunmen, the provincial governor said.

Turkey has some 800 troops in Afghanistan, in and around Kabul, as part of Nato’s International Security Assistance Force.—Reuters