KABUL, Aug 4 (AFP) - The UNHCR suspended all movements in southeast Afghanistan Wednesday after two Afghans working for an aid agency linked with the refugee agency were shot dead, officials said.
Two Afghans working for a German non-governmental organisation, the Maltese Order, were gunned down Tuesday, the group announced in Germany.
The two were shot by gunmen in a passing car as they drove near Neak Nam area in Zurmat district of southeastern Paktia province. One man was killed instantly and his 19-year-old colleague died from his wounds later in hospital.
"We have suspended all movements in the southeast but we will continue to provide emergency relief," said United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) spokesman Mohammed Nadir Farhad.
"We are extremely concerned by the repeated security incidents. We condemn the cowardly and gruesome murder of the staff of the Maltese Order," he added.
The Maltese Order, which has been working with the UN refugee agency since last year to help ease the return of displaced people in Afghanistan, told AFP it was suspending all its operations in the country.
There have been regular attacks on UN staffers, electoral and aid workers and US-led troops and Afghan forces especially in the insurgency-wracked south and southeast of the country.
Loyalists from the ousted Taliban regime have vowed to use violence to derail the country`s first presidential elections in October.
Parliamentary elections were pushed back to spring 2005 to allow the government time to quell a rising violence.
The presidential election, which has already been delayed twice, would be the first since the hardline Islamic Taliban militia were ousted from power in 2001 by US-led forces following the September 11 attacks on the United States.
The Maltese Order has some 20 international staff, who are assisted by around 250 local workers, in the capital Kabul and seven other provinces to help with reconstruction.