Authorities were yesterday searching for two French aid workers kidnapped in central Afghanistan, but the Taliban denied capturing them.
The Action Against Hunger (Action Contre la Faim) workers were taken from their guest house in the early hours of Friday in the central province of Day Kundi, their Paris-based organization has said.
“We have no news on their fate,” provincial governor Sultan Ali Uruzgani said. “Our security forces have been searching for them.”
PHOTO: AP
The interior ministry in the capital Kabul said it did not know who had taken them.
“Day Kundi does not see a strong infiltration of insurgents and terrorists,” ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary said.
The Taliban, waging an insurgency against the government of President Hamid Karzai, have been involved in a series of kidnappings in Afghanistan, as have criminal gangs seeking ransom.
A spokesman for the militant group, Zabihullah Mujahed, denied the Taliban had the French nationals.
There are several rebel groups operating in Afghanistan, while crime has shot up since the Taliban government was overthrown in a US-led invasion in late 2001 for harboring al-Qaeda.
The Taliban have claimed responsibility for the abduction last week of an Afghan senator 70km outside of Kabul. They have said they would free him in exchange for the release from jail of some of their men.
But they denied involvement in the kidnapping near the western city of Herat last week of two Turkish nationals working for a construction company.
Afghan police said a German national abducted near the city in mid-December was believed to have been killed after a ransom was not paid for his release.
Action Against Hunger has projects in Day Kundi, about 300km east of the capital, to improve access to food, water and sanitation, according to their website. The province is one of the poorest in the country.
The organization has only 10 expatriate staff in Afghanistan. It suspended its relief operations in the country after the abductions.
A French businessman was kidnapped in Afghanistan in May, apparently by Taliban militants, and released about a month later after a ransom was paid, according to Afghan officials.
Last year, two French humanitarian workers for the Terre D’Enfance (“A World For Our Children”) relief group were abducted and passed to the Taliban.
They were released weeks later amid speculation that a ransom was paid.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
RSS