Asia

Asia

Bangladeshi engineer killed in Afghanistan kidnap

18 December 2010 21:09 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Kidnappers in Afghanistan killed a Bangladeshi working for a South Korean firm and are holding three road workers hostage after storming their camp at gunpoint, officials said Saturday, APA reports quoting Associated Press.

The attack happened late on Friday at a remote road construction camp between the northern Afghan provinces of Balkh and Samangan, police and local government spokesmen told AFP.

The body of the dead man was later delivered to the office of South Korean construction company Samwhan Corporation in Mazar-i-Sharif, according to an Afghan official.

"Seven Afghan and Bangladeshi road construction workers were kidnapped last night," said Shirjan Duranai, spokesman for the police in Balkh province. "One Bangladeshi was killed."

Duranai later said that although some of the workers had escaped, three were still being held, although their nationalities were not clear.

Another local official described how gunmen had burst into the camp, killing the Bangladeshi immediately and then kidnapping the others.

"Last night at 8:00 pm (1530 GMT), unknown gunmen entered a road construction camp, killing one Bangladeshi on the spot and snatching away seven other workers including an Afghan guard," said Enayatullah Zafar, the head of Balkh’s public works directorate.

The South Korean embassy in Kabul said that their information was that seven people, all Bangladeshis, were still unaccounted for.

No South Korean workers were harmed in the incident and the company has decided to bring its workers back home following the attack, a South Korean foreign ministry spokeswoman in Seoul told AFP.

The dead man’s body has now been handed over by police to Samwhan, according to local official Dur Mohammad.

"The body of the slain Bangladeshi national has been handed over by police to the Samwhan organisation in Mazar city and will be transferred to Kabul tommorrow," he said.

A local representative of the firm in Kabul could not confirm that the dead man worked for them when contacted by AFP. However, the South Korean embassy in Kabul confirmed that the workers were employed by a South Korean company.

The incident happened in the north, where Taliban insurgents are increasingly active as NATO has opened up new supply lines, in an area adjacent to where German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited on Saturday.

Kidnappings in the area are sometimes linked to the Taliban but can also be related to gangs hoping to secure ransom payments.

Many abductions of foreigners in Afghanistan are carried out by criminal gangs, who then sell their hostages to Taliban insurgents fighting against the Western-backed government and foreign troops.

Criminal groups and insurgents have kidnapped several dozen foreigners in Afghanistan since the 2001 US-led invasion ousted the Taliban regime in Kabul. Most of the hostages are released safe and well.

Earlier this month, two South Korean construction workers were rescued after being briefly kidnapped by unidentified attackers in northern Afghanistan.

In October, a Dutch aid worker and his Afghan driver were snatched at gunpoint while driving through northern Afghanistan’s remote Takhar province. The Dutch government announced on December 2 that they had been freed.

Apart from civilian companies, South Korea has a team of reconstruction workers and troops tasked with protecting them in the country.