LONDON (AFP) - A dual British-Irish national was one of three UN election workers kidnapped in Afghanistan, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said.
"One of them is a British-Irish dual national," Straw said. "We are in touch with the family."
UN officials and witnesses in Kabul said the trio were an Irish woman, a woman from the Serbian province of Kosovo and a Filipino man, who were pulled from their UN-marked car in front of a UN compound.
Straw said the incident provided a "somber context" for his speech later Thursday on "the challenges ahead for Afghanistan", at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.
In ongoing violence in Afghanistan since the US offensive deposed the Taliban regime, insurgents have targeted foreign and Afghan aid workers, troops and officials.
They have killed 34 UN and aid workers, four of them foreigners, over the past two years, said Nick Downie, a security advisor for a coalition of aid organizations.
Another 60 election workers and sub-contractors, including three foreigners, have been killed in violence in Afghanistan this year.
"I have no reason to believe it will be anything other than unusual for the future," Straw said, when asked whether the kidnapping was the beginning of a trend.
"I think it will stay unusual," he said.
Britain has sent air force Harrier jets to provide support to the US-led military coalition which is hunting remaining Taliban militants, and to the NATO-led multinational peacekeeping force deployed around Kabul, the International Security Assistance Force.
10/28/2004 - 15:27 GMT - AFP