KABUL, 20 May 2005 — Eleven Afghans working with a US-based company in southern Afghanistan were killed in two ambushes by suspected Taleban militants, a US official said yesterday.
Most of the victims were working for the US-based company Chemonics, which is involved with irrigation projects in Afghanistan’s top poppy cultivating province of Helmand.
“It is very likely that they were employees of the same company but all of these people were not necessarily direct employees, there may have been some drivers or police killed too,” the official told AFP.
Six Afghans were killed in an ambush in the early hours of yesterday in southern Zabul province.
They were escorting the body of one of Chemonics’ five Afghan reconstruction workers killed in a similar attack in neighboring Helmand province a day earlier, the US official and Western security sources said.
Chemonics runs irrigation projects aimed at providing opium farmers in the province with alternative livelihoods.
“Six people who were carrying a body in a vehicle were ambushed by Taleban on Aman bridge near Qalat city and they were all killed,” said provincial police chief Amir Mohamed.
The incident, which took place at 2:00 am yesterday close to the provincial capital Qalat, some 325 kilometers south of Kabul came less than 24 hours after five Afghan reconstruction workers were killed in an ambush by Taleban insurgents in Helmand.
