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BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3961349.stm

Thursday, 28 October, 2004, 16:14 GMT 17:14 UK

Foreign poll staff held in Kabul


Three foreign election workers in Afghanistan have been kidnapped in the capital, Kabul, officials say.
The three were taken at gunpoint. Two of them are women, one a British-Irish national, the other a Kosovo Albanian. The third hostage is a Filipino.

The BBC's Andrew North in Kabul says it is unclear if they were targeted because of election links, or for being foreigners.

A group called the Army of Muslims says it is holding them outside Kabul.

"The victims were international staff with the electoral commission here in Kabul," UN spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva told the Associated Press news agency.

He refused to speculate on a motive for the kidnapping and would not reveal the names of the hostages.

UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw confirmed that one of the three held dual British-Irish nationality.

"We are in touch with the family," he told reporters in London.

The woman was later named as Annetta Flanigan from County Armagh in Northern Ireland.

The Philippines government said it was praying for the safe release of one of its junior diplomats, Angelito Nayan, and his co-workers.

The kidnapping - the first of foreigners in broad daylight in Kabul - has sent shock waves through the expatriate community.

Foreign aid workers and UN staff have been ordered back to their compounds and told to remain there or in other safe havens until further notice.

Observers say the fear is that foreign workers could now be targets in Afghanistan in the same way that they are in Iraq.

'Forced from car'

The abducted workers are part of a joint United Nations and Afghan government team that organised the election and has been conducting the vote count since polling day on 9 October.

The vote count ended on Thursday, with the current interim president, Hamid Karzai, far ahead of his rivals.

The Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) said that the workers were seized after being stopped by a four-wheel drive vehicle near Karteh Parwan, a relatively affluent area of north-west Kabul near the Intercontinental Hotel.

"They were forced out of their car and then taken into another vehicle," Isaf spokesman Valery Putz said.

Eyewitnesses say there were at least three kidnappers wearing camouflage and armed with Kalashnikov rifles.

Roadblocks

The kidnappers reportedly carried the two women off on their shoulders and then drove away.

One lorry driver who was nearby said the whole incident lasted just a few minutes.

The driver of the UN vehicle was reportedly beaten, but is now said to be in safe hands.

Afghan and international peacekeepers immediately launched a search to find the kidnappers: roadblocks were set up and Isaf helicopters flew repeatedly over the city.

The Army of Muslims (Jaish-e-Muslimeen) - led by a former Taleban military commander, Akbar Agha - told the BBC's Rahimullah Yusufzai in Peshawar that it had carried out the kidnappings.

A spokesman said the group was holding the hostages outside Kabul. He said they had been drugged and would be questioned when they regained consicousness.

He said he was unaware that two of them were women, or that they were election workers. So far no conditions have been set for their release.

Kidnappings have been relatively rare in Afghanistan over the past few years, targeting mainly construction workers in the south.

But there have been a number of Taleban attacks on foreigners.

In July, the aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres pulled out of Afghanistan because five of its staff had been killed, allegedly by the Taleban.

There were a number of deadly attacks during the electoral registration process, but the campaign itself and vote count were mostly free of violence.

A rare suicide bomb attack in Kabul on Saturday killed three people, including the bomber.

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