IP/03/1238

Brussels, September 11, 2003

Four Aid workers killed in

Four Afghan aid workers were murdered on the 8th of September by a group of suspected Taliban insurgents in province in south eastern Afghanistan. Five aid workers with the Danish organisation DACAAR were driving on a back road returning to the DACAAR field office in Makur village in Ab Band District of Ghazni. The aid workers were pulled from their car, tired up and riddled with bullets. Miraculously, one aid worker survived by feigning dead and is now in hospital in . DACAAR, an international organisation with a large Afghan staff of 1,100, is one of the European Commission’s major implementing partners in rural development projects. With support from the Commission, DACAAR has been active in improving access to safe water for millions of Afghans a decade.

Chargé d’Affaires Jean-Francois Cautain, of the European Commission Office in Kabul, said “We at the Commission are becoming increasingly concerned about the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan. A continuing worsening of security for our implementing partners’ staff can seriously affect our ability to deliver reconstruction assistance to the people of Afghanistan. To rectify this situation, the Commission is currently looking at ways to increase its assistance to the Afghan Transitional Authority for improvement of security in the country.” As a result of this latest attack on aid workers in south eastern Afghanistan, DACAAR has temporarily shut down its activities in the area. DACAAR and many other organisations working in Afghanistan have already prohibited travel by international staff in the southern provinces bordering Pakistan. Following an assessment of this incident, DACAAR and a number of the other large aid organisations, may be forced to close down activities in the southeast indefinitely. The surviving aid worker reported that the attackers told the aid workers that they had been lectured before to not work for foreigners. In recent months, there have been increasing reports that Afghans working in the south east for international organisations have been stopped by groups of armed men and warned to stop working for international aid agencies.