Five aid workers, including three foreigners, were killed on Wednesday when gunmen opened fire on their car in the north-western Afghan province of Badghis, the worst attack on the aid community since the fall of the Taleban.
Amir Shah Nayebzada, police chief of Badghis, said he suspected remnants of the ousted militant Islamic regime were behind the killing, although Taleban insurgency has been mainly concentrated in the south and east of the country.
"This horrific incident happened just before dusk," he told Reuters. "It seems to be a politically motived act, most probably carried out by Taleban fighters, for we see no reason why other people would do it.
"The Taleban just want to destabilise the country ahead of the elections".
Badghis governor Azizullah Afzali said the five employees of the medical aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) were leaving their office in a vehicle near the provincial capital of Qalaye Naw when unidentified gunmen opened fire.
He said that two Afghan men, a Belgian woman, a Dutch man and a Swiss man were killed.
A spokesman for MSF in Kabul said a car carrying five employees was involved in an incident, but he declined to give details of what happened and the condition of those in the vehicle.
The attack was the latest evidence of a growing wave of violence across Afghanistan in the runup to landmark elections in September, most of it blamed on Islamic militants including Taleban remnants and al Qaeda.
But the incident in the north-west of the country will be particularly alarming for aid workers, who had operated relatively freely in the north and west while curbing their activities in the south and east.