KABUL, 10 May 2004 — Two foreigners, one of whom was likely a Swiss national, were stoned to death by unknown attackers in a public garden in Afghanistan’s capital Kabul yesterday, a government spokesman told AFP.
Interior Ministry spokesman Litfula Mashal said the two men were killed in Chelsitun garden in the west of Kabul. He said one was a Swiss man about 30 years old but the nationality of the other victim was not yet known.
“We do not know who killed them. Their bodies were found at the scene yesterday morning.
They have been taken to the Kabul morgue,” Mashal told AFP. “We don’t know by now what were they were doing in the garden and who killed them. The investigation is going on.”
A police source said the two victims were wearing Afghan clothes. “They were beaten by bricks and killed,” he said, adding they could have been the victims of a kidnapping.
The bodies were found in a vacant old garden surrounded by high walls in western Kabul near a hill.
There have been a spate of killings, kidnappings and ambushes involving foreigners mainly in south and southeastern Afghanistan, but this is the first incident of its kind in the Afghan capital.
Meanwhile, an Afghan official said yesterday a senior Taleban commander has been arrested in a joint raid by US and Afghan forces in a troubled province in southern Afghanistan.
Mullah Roozi Khan, Taleban’s high-ranking commander for Zabul province, was arrested in a military operation that involved several hundred US and Afghan troops.
