KABUL, 8 June 2004 — The US-led coalition’s actions in Afghanistan are endangering aid workers in the country, a senior officer with a medical aid group which lost five staff to suspected Taleban said yesterday.

The work of the 20,000-strong coalition’s force hunting Taleban, Al-Qaeda and other militants has placed humanitarian work “completely at risk now,” according to the director of operations of the Dutch branch of Medecins Sans Frontieres, Kenny Gluck.

In Afghanistan, following the deaths of three Europeans and two Afghans working for the group last Wednesday, Gluck criticized the US military for distributing leaflets linking humanitarian aid with cooperation with coalition soldiers.

“Leaflets like the one that went out, they undermine respect for humanitarian activity and they create a misperception that humanitarian action is in service of someone’s military or political cause,” he told AFP. “It’s not. Humanitarian activity is solely in the cause of saving lives and reducing suffering.”

In a statement released from its Amsterdam office, Medecins Sans Frontieres said it was “extremely concerned” about the coalition’s “continued attempts to usurp and misrepresent the provision of humanitarian aid to people in need in Afghanistan.”

“It’s soiling the general environment for humanitarian action and that’s been going on for several years,” Gluck told AFP.

Coalition spokesman US Lt. Col. Tucker Mansager said the military was not blurring the line between aid and military activity but that terrorists were. The coalition has said that it expects militants, who generally ambush and attack small groups of patrols rather than face superior numbers or firepower, to increase their attacks against ‘soft targets’ such as unarmed aid workers in the lead-up to September elections.

In condemning the killings of the Belgian woman, Dutchman, Norwegian man and two Afghan men which took place in a northwestern province normally considered stable, Amnesty International said the incident indicated “a growing environment of instability.”

“Amnesty International reminds the international community of the need for continued efforts in Afghanistan and calls for all those governments who pledged support to follow through on their commitments,” it said.

Five more foreign aid groups have suspended operations in a northwestern Afghan province after attackers threw a grenade at the office of an Italian aid agency. The attack on the office of Alisei in Qalaye Naw, capital of Badghis province, caused no casualties, but comes after five aid workers were killed in Badghis last week.

Sunday night’s blast prompted the agency and four other foreign nongovernmental organizations to suspend operations in Badghis, a foreign aid official said.

The Nobel Peace Prize-winning aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) has already suspended its operations in Afghanistan after three of its European and two Afghan staff were killed in Badghis last Wednesday.

US-led forces captured five suspected militants after a firefight in the southeast Afghan border town of Spin Boldak, a US military official said yesterday.

A group of militants fired small arms and light machine guns at US-led troops north of Spin Boldak, which borders Pakistan’s Baluchistan province on Friday, Lt. Col. Tucker Mansager told a news briefing in Kabul. Five men were captured “in connection with the engagement” he said.