One British and one South African employee of the international courier company DHL, together with an Afghan guard, were killed in a shoot-out in the heart of the Afghan capital on Saturday, officials said.
Police said they were questioning DHL employees but were not yet sure of the motive for the violence, which comes amid a rising tide of attacks and less than a week after Taliban militants killed a British aid worker in another part of Kabul.
"We can now confirm that a British and a South African national were killed in a shooting incident in Kabul," said a British Foreign Office spokeswoman. "We are in contact with the Afghan police to establish the circumstances." While Taliban insurgents have launched a number of attacks inside Kabul, an Afghan Interior Ministry official said the Saturday shooting did not appear to be politically motivated.
"It was an encounter between Afghan guards and foreigners of the company," a ministry source said on condition of anonymity. A spokesman for Deutsche Post, which owns DHL, confirmed the attack took place at about 0830 local time outside the DHL building in Kabul. The company was working with local authorities to find out what happened, he said.
Police covered a silver sports utility vehicle at the scene with plastic sheeting. There was blood on the ground and two bulletholes in the window of the DHL office, which is close to the Iranian embassy and the headquarters of the national intelligence agency.
The spate of killings and kidnappings in the Afghan capital comes after President Hamid Karzai appointed a new interior minister in an effort to clean up widespread corruption at the ministry. If the Taliban turn out to have been responsible for Saturday's attack, the hundreds of foreign aid workers in the city are likely to severely restrict their movements.
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