KABUL, 16 October 2006 — A series of Taleban-linked attacks across Afghanistan yesterday left seven people dead, including a provincial councilor who was shot dead on his way to work in the southern city of Kandahar.
There were also fears for an Italian photojournalist who had been out of contact for several days, with media reports saying men claiming to be Taleban had captured him in Helmand province on allegations he was a spy. The photojournalist missing in Afghanistan is believed to have been kidnapped, Italy’s Foreign Ministry told AFP yesterday.
“All the indications show that it is a kidnapping and we are treating it as such,” the ministry’s press office said.
The NATO force said in Kabul on Saturday that the photographer had been out of contact for several days, but could not confirm reports of a kidnapping.
The missing journalist, Gabriele Torsello, is based in London, but has spent the past decade traveling some of the world’s trouble hotspots such as Kashmir and Nepal.
He “has been out of contact for the last two to three days,” International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) spokesman Maj. Dominic Whyte told AFP in Kabul.
The photographer was “out of mobile contact” and had “not called anyone either in the office or at home,” Whyte said.
Unknown gunmen yesterday opened fire on councilor Mohammad Younis Hussaini after he left his home and was headed for the office, a doctor at a Kandahar hospital said.
Three of his companions were hurt in the attack, said Mohammad Tahir, a doctor at Mirwais hospital where the wounded were being treated. It was not clear who carried out the shooting but the extremist Taleban movement has killed several government officials as part of its spiraling insurgency.
The head of the provincial women’s ministry was assassinated in a similar attack last month. In the western city of Herat, a bomb exploded near a convoy of men believed to be US nationals who trained police.
“Two of our countrymen were martyred and another wounded. It was a roadside bomb exploded by the enemies of Afghanistan,” provincial police commander Mohammad Ayoob Salangi told reporters.
Police in the province of Khost reported that hundreds of rebels attacked a police checkpoint near the border with Pakistan. “The fighting lasted from midnight to three in the morning. Three policemen were killed and one injured,” a police commander said.
