11 Chinese killed by Afghan rebels
JALAW GIR, Afghanistan -- The slaughter of 11 sleeping Chinese road workers yesterday was the deadliest attack on foreign civilians since the fall of the Taliban, and dealt a blow to US claims that Afghanistan is becoming safer ahead of milestone elections this fall.
The assault in the relatively tranquil north also underlined the dangers for thousands of foreigners helping to rebuild Afghanistan, where President Hamid Karzai's US-backed government is fighting off an insurgency by Taliban rebels and their Al Qaeda allies. Aid workers warned the bloodshed could prompt a further pullback of their activities to the capital, Kabul.
The United Nations condemned the "cold-blooded" attack in Kunduz Province and halted registration of voters there until at least tomorrow -- a further setback in preparations for the September elections, with still only one-third of the estimated 10 million eligible Afghan voters signed up. It also told staff to stay off the roads.
Although on a smaller scale, attacks on foreign civilians have intensified in Afghanistan since a similar pattern of targeting expatriates emerged in Iraq, where the Americans are also trying to achieve a democratic transition that could allow US troops to withdraw.
The Chinese were attacked just after midnight at a camp where about 100 of them stay in a patch of desert near Jalaw Gir, 120 miles north of Kabul.
Six to eight assailants killed an Afghan guard at the unfenced camp and then raked the Chinese men with a hail of rifle fire, said Mutaleb Beg, the Kunduz police chief. Nine died on the spot and two more in a hospital. Four others were wounded and in stable condition.
Yesterday afternoon, dozens of grim-faced survivors sat on the ground outside their camp with luggage, waiting near a fleet of bulldozers and trucks to be evacuated to the city of Kunduz. Defense Minister Mohammed Fahim -- acting president while Karzai visits the United States -- blamed "the Al Qaeda network and its allies" for the killings.
But a man who says he is a spokesman for the Taliban militia, which hosted Al Qaeda in Afghanistan when it ruled the country, said the Taliban was not involved.
"It doesn't have any link with the Taliban," Hamid Agha told the Associated Press.
Beg pointed a finger at supporters of renegade Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who has teamed up with the Taliban and has vowed to oust Karzai's US-backed government.
Several thousand foreigners including diplomats and security guards live in Afghanistan, managing key reconstruction projects, advising government ministries, and running countless programs for the United Nations.
Most spend their time behind heavy security in Kabul, and those who venture beyond do so increasingly only with armed guards. Thousands of Interior Ministry troops protect the US-funded reconstruction of the country's main highway from Kabul to Kandahar. As a result, most victims of attacks are Afghans, and only nine foreigners had died before yesterday, including three European medical workers killed in northwestern Badghis Province last week.
The road contractors worked for the China Railway Shisiju Group, which last year won a World Bank contract to rebuild the highway from Doshi, in neighboring Baghlan Province, to the Tajik border, part of a $22.5 million infrastructure project.
