Three foreign UN election workers kidnapped in Kabul

KABUL (AFP) - Armed men wearing military-style jackets abducted three foreign United Nations election workers in broad daylight in Kabul as vote-counting ended in Afghanistan's landmark election.
The trio -- a British-Irish woman, a woman from Kosovo and a Filipino diplomat -- were pulled from their UN-marked car in front of a UN compound in a busy west Kabul neighbourhood, UN officials and witnesses said.
They were employed by the joint UN-Afghan election commission that oversaw Afghanistan's first presidential election on October 9.
The kidnappers forced the three out of their car in front of the UN compound in a busy street, beat up their driver and bundled them into a black Toyota four-wheel drive vehicle just after 12:30 pm (0800 GMT), officials and witnesses said.
The driver, who was left behind as the kidnappers tore away at high speed, sounded the alarm.
"The (UN workers) were stopped...by armed men in camouflage military uniforms driving a four-by-four vehicle and were kidnapped," interior ministry spokesman Lutfullah Mashal told AFP.
The kidnappers were armed with AK-47 rifles, said an Afghan intelligence official on condition on anonymity.
A group calling itself the Army of Muslims claimed responsibility, Arabic satellite television station Al-Jazeera reported.
"Fighters from the Army of Muslims have kidnapped the three UN workers," the group's commander, Syed Akbar Agha, told the station's correspondent in Islamabad, the capital of neighbouring Pakistan.
A senior Pakistani religious leader said the group was the new military wing of Afghanistan's former ruling Taliban regime and was headed by the hardline militants' fugitive spiritual leader, Mullah Omar.
"It has been assigned the task of conducting military operations against occupying forces (in Afghanistan), targeting foreign non-governmental organisations and people associated with them," said the Pakistani religious leader, who had close links with the ousted regime.
The US embassy warned this month that foreigners could be targeted for political kidnappings, which have become prevalent this year in Iraq.
"Anti-government forces are planning to implement a policy of kidnapping foreigners as a political tool," the embassy said in a statement on October 8.
Fighters loyal to the Taliban have been waging a bloody insurgency, targeting foreign and Afghan aid workers, troops and officials. They failed to disrupt October 9 elections but have since killed 21 people.
More than 60 election workers, including three foreigners, have been killed in Taliban-related violence in Afghanistan this year.
Over the past two years 34 UN and aid workers, four of them foreigners, have been killed in other non-election violence, said Nick Downie, a security adviser for a coalition of aid organisations.
The abduction was the first of its kind in Kabul since the Taliban's fall three years ago and drew disturbing parallels with the spate of kidnappings in Iraq.
"This is the first time such a thing has happened in Kabul since the collapse of the Taliban," a presidential palace official said.
Downie said it was likely a "targeted abduction."
Foreign peacekeepers, Afghan troops and local police launched a full-scale search for the abducted trio in several Kabul neighbourhoods and the Paghman valley west of the city.
They searched a local commander's house in the affluent Wazir Akbar Khan neighbourhood but found nothing.
Troops blocked all main roads and set up checkpoints. Apache helicopters from the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force buzzed overhead.
The abductions come five days after a suicide bomber attacked a group of foreign peacekeepers buying carpets on Kabul's famous "Chicken Street" shopping strip.
An American woman, 23, and an Afghan girl, 11, were killed and three Icelandic peacekeepers were injured in Saturday's attack, for which the Taliban claimed responsibility.
Election commission officials meanwhile announced the completion of the drawn-out presidential vote count.
US-backed interim leader Hamid Karzai won in a landslide with more than 55 percent of the vote, avoiding a potentially destabilising second-round run-off.
The abductions highlighted one of Karzai's most pressing concerns -- how to end decades of violence in a nation that has suffered from decades of oppressive rule by communists, the Soviets, warlords and the Taliban.

10/28/2004 - 17:44 GMT - AFP