Gunmen abducted 10 Afghan workers in a daring ambush while two local UN staff kidnapped by alleged Taliban militants nearly a month ago were freed, government officials said Wednesday. The abductors raided a private construction company site in Afghanistan's western-most province of Herat on Tuesday, snatching an Afghan engineer and nine workers, the interior ministry said.
They set ablaze several rooms used by the company, which was contracted to build border posts for Afghan police in the province, it said. The ministry identified the abductors as "enemies of Afghanistan" - a term often used by Afghan officials to include Taliban insurgents and criminals.
Herat has seen a series of foreign and Afghan kidnappings with some victims released for ransom and others killed. In the adjacent province of Nimroz, two Afghans working for the World Food Programme (WFP) and kidnapped on New Year's Day with four other people, were freed, the provincial governor said.
"Two WFP workers were freed late Tuesday with mediation from tribal elders," Ghulam Dastageer Azad told AFP. There were no conditions for their relese and no ransom was paid, he said. One other captive has already been freed, but a worker with an Afghan NGO and two government employees are still being held by the Taliban, Azad said.