Two die in attack on UNICEF vehicle in Afghanistan

An Afghan driver and a doctor with a German-based relief group were killed when a UNICEF vehicle came under rocket fire in Afghanistan, the UN body said yesterday, in the latest attack on humanitarian workers in the troubled nation.

A project manager for the UN children's agency was also seriously wounded in the attack Friday just 40km outside Herat, the main city in western Afghanistan, UNICEF said.

"We can confirm that the two bodies that were recovered last night were of our driver and a doctor with Malteser, a medical NGO [non-governmental organization] in Afghanistan," UNICEF spokesman Edward Carwardine said.

Malteser International, a worldwide relief service headquartered in Germany, has been active in Herat and neighboring Badghis Province since October 2001 helping with setting up health care facilities and schools.

The UNICEF vehicle had been returning from a routine mission in Badghis with the three men on board.

"We assume it was a rocket that was fired at a passing UNICEF vehicle which was accompanied by a local authority armed escort," Carwardine said.

"The UNICEF staff member was very severely injured and rushed to a Herat hospital for intensive treatment," Cawardine said.

The man was in a stable condition but had to have a leg amputated, he said.

Chief of intelligence in Herat, Mohammad Mussa Rasuli, said the driver and a doctor were dead found at the scene of the attack. Two rockets were fired at the vehicle, he said.

"To my knowledge, after four years of being here, this is the first incident of this nature that UNICEF has suffered," Carwardine said.

The interior ministry, which covers security issues, condemned the attack and blamed it on the "enemies on Afghanistan," a catch-all phrase that authorities use to refer to Taliban insurgents and other Islamist groups blamed for the unrest plaguing Afghanistan.

Taliban rebels launch regular attacks on Afghan and foreign forces, reconstruction projects, NGOs and government officials but most of the violence is in the south and southeast of the country.

There have been other attacks on medical workers in the same area as the one of Friday. Only last month, unidentified attackers stormed a health clinic in Badghis, gunning down four medical workers and a driver.

The clinic was funded by a range of foreign NGOs.

Three European and two Afghan aid workers working with international aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) were killed in an attack in Badghis in June 2004.

The murders prompted MSF to pull out of Afghanistan after 24 years, blaming the government for failing to adequately protect aid workers and hunt the attackers.

In October last year, two doctors, a pharmacist, a nurse and an administrator with an Afghan NGO were killed in an ambush in the insurgency-hit south blamed on the Taliban.