Unidentified gunmen killed a British woman working for an aid agency in the Afghan capital early yesterday, officials said. The British embassy in Kabul said it had confirmed the dead woman was a British national, but was still checking if the woman was also of South African origin or had dual South African citizenship.
Afghan officials said the woman was from South Africa.
Two men on a motorbike shot the woman in a southern district of Kabul, Tolo TV station said.
The body of the woman was brought to a nearby hospital.
“Police brought the body of a woman from district 3. We still haven’t completed our checks, but the initial information is that she received gunshot wounds,” said Mohammad Omar Hadi, deputy head of the hospital.
The woman worked for a British Christian aid organization that focuses on community development, education and vocational training for people with disabilities.
One spokesman for the Taliban declined to comment on the incident, neither confirming nor denying the militant group’s involvement.
Another Taliban spokesman said his militia killed the woman because she worked for a group that sought to teach Christianity.
“We killed her because she was working for an organization which was preaching Christianity,” Zabihullah Mujahid said by telephone.
Meanwhile, NATO-led troops assaulted an insurgent stronghold just west of the capital, sparking a two-day battle that killed 20 militants, officials said yesterday.
To the west of Kabul, assault helicopters dropped NATO troops into Jalrez District of Wardak Province on Thursday, sparking a two-day battle involving airstrikes, the military alliance said in a statement.
More than 20 militants were killed, it said.
Wardak, just 60km west of Kabul, has become an insurgent stronghold.
Militants have expanded their traditional bases in the country’s south and east — along the border with Pakistan — and have gained territory in the provinces surrounding Kabul, a worrying development for Afghan and NATO troops.
On Sunday, Taliban militants stopped a bus traveling on a highway in the south, seized about 50 people on board and slaughtered around 30 of them, officials said.
A Taliban spokesman said the militia’s fighters carried out the attack on Sunday and that they had killed 27 Afghan army soldiers riding on the bus.
Afghan officials said no soldiers were aboard and that the militants had killed innocent civilians.
Militants stopped the bus traveling in a two-bus convoy in Kandahar Province, said Matiullah Khan, the provincial police chief.
Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman General Mohammad Zahir Azimi said 31 people were killed.
Six of the dead were beheaded in a separate area of Maiwand from where the other 25 bodies were found, he said.
Khan originally offered a higher toll, saying about 40 civilians were killed. Later on Sunday, he told a news conference that 24 people had been killed.
He said the victims had come from northern Afghanistan and were between 20 and 25 years old.
Khan said authorities had arrested four Taliban commanders in connection with the attack.
Azimi dismissed the Taliban claim that soldiers had been killed.
“Our soldiers travel by military convoy, not in civilian buses. And we have military air transportation,” he said.
“The Taliban want to hide the news that they arrested and killed innocent Afghan civilians,” he said.
Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi said militants looked at the documents of those traveling on the bus, released all the civilians and killed only soldiers.
Khan said two buses had been traveling together, and the militants had tried to stop the first one but failed. He said the insurgents fired at the first bus.
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