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| Districts of Badakhshan. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
(Reuters) - Five
aid workers, including two Western women doctors, have been kidnapped by
unidentified gunmen in northeastern Afghanistan, police and the
provincial governor's office said on Wednesday.
The aid workers working for a
foreign-based aid group were making their way from central
Faizabad city
and were abducted on Tuesday in Yaftal-e Bala district, said Abdul
Marouf Rasikh, a spokesman for the governor of
Badakhshan province.
Police
in the area, which is not a focus for Afghan insurgents but which is
home to groups of mainly criminal gunmen, said the aid workers had been
visiting a health clinic in
Yawan district, where the road had been
destroyed by floods.
"They were
travelling by donkey. Two foreign women and their Afghan translators
were kidnapped and we have started a search operation," said Lal
Mohammad Ahmadzai, police spokesman for northern Afghanistan.
NATO-led
forces said they had no information on the kidnapping, while NGOs
operating in the area declined to comment citing the sensitivity of the
issue.
The kidnapping of foreigners
has become relatively common in parts of Afghanistan since U-S.-backed
Afghan forces toppled the former Taliban government in 2001, heralding a
10-year anti-insurgent war.
(Reporting by Rob Taylor; Editing by Nick Macfie)
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from TOLONEWS:
Two foreign doctors and their three Afghan colleagues were
kidnapped in a remote area of northern Afghanistan Tuesday evening,
local officials said.
The group, who work for non-government organisation Medair, were
stopped by a group of armed men while travelling on horseback between
the Yaftali and Ragh districts of the country's furthest north-eastern
province of Badakhshan, provincial spokesman Abdul Maroof Rasekh told
TOLOnews on Wednesday.
The incident was reported as a kidnapping by the humanitarian
organisation, which has not released the names of those believed to be
abducted, Rasekh said.
According to a security report, five Medair staff members - two
international females and three Afghan males - along with two hired
guides were stopped as they left a village in the
Yaftali Sufla District
by five or six armed men believed to be members of an "armed opposition
group" from Shahri Buzorg district.
The report released by the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office (ANSO) said
the armed men sent away the two hired horsemen and then moved with the
five staff members towards the Dawang area of Shahri Buzorg district.
ANSO said the incident was "an exceptionally strong outlier" for the district, province, and region.
Local police have started a search operation in the two districts, Rasekh said.
No group, including the Taliban, has claimed responsibility for the kidnapping.
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