Attacks kill three Westerners, five Afghan children

A British aid worker, two German soldiers and five Afghan children were killed in Afghanistan Monday in a day of bloodshed that highlights worsening security seven years after the ouster of the Taliban.

The Taliban, an extremist Islamic group that was in government between 1996 and 2001, claimed responsibility for the killings which come soon after a security group and the United Nations said attacks were at a high this year.

A 17-year-old meanwhile told how he had survived after he was forced to kneel in a ditch with five other men who were shot dead Friday after being accused by Taliban of being security force recruits.

President Hamid Karzai condemned the killing of aid worker Gayle Williams, who was shot dead in Kabul, as well as the deaths of the German troops and children in a suicide attack in the north.

In a statement, he said the murder of Williams, 34, who also had South African nationality, was cowardly and unforgivable.

The aid worker was gunned down as she walked to work at SERVE Afghanistan, a British-based Christian charity that helps disabled people.

"Two armed men sitting on a motorbike shot her dead. Some bullets hit her body and some hit her leg and when police got there she was dead," interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary told AFP.

The attackers had fled and their motive was unknown, he said.

The Taliban, which has carried out similar assassinations in the southern city of Kandahar, said it was responsible.

"We killed her because she was working for an organisation which was preaching Christianity in Afghanistan," spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told AFP by telephone.

SERVE Afghanistan rejected the charge of preaching. "We have a specific policy against proselytising," said the London-based chairman of the board, Mike Lyth.

Karzai also expressed condolences for the deaths of five Afghan children and two German soldiers killed in a suicide attack in the northern province of Kunduz for which the Taliban claimed responsibility.

Germany has about 3,300 soldiers in a 40-nation NATO-led force helping Afghan forces tackle the Taliban insurgency.

This year 232 international soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan, more than in the whole of 2007, most of them in insurgent bomb attacks.

Attacks in the post-Taliban era are agreed to be at an all-time high this year with the UN special envoy to Afghanistan Kai Eide saying last week that July and August recorded the most incidents since 2002.

A security watchdog, Afghanistan NGO Safety Group, said last week that insurgent attacks on aid workers were at the highest level in six years.

In a hospital in the southern town of Gereshk in Helmand province, meanwhile, an Afghan teenager described how he had hidden wounded among the corpses of five men shot dead by Taliban after they were accused of being police recruits.

The youngster, known as Shukrullah, said he was among about 40 men pulled off a bus travelling through southern Afghanistan last week and split into smaller groups.

"Taliban made us kneel in a ditch and fired at us. Five other people who were with me died and I survived," he told AFP.

Police confirmed they had found five bodies after six others were discovered Sunday in Helmand. They believe around 30 men were killed. The Taliban has claimed to have killed 27.

The United States condemned the reported Taliban attack on the bus.

"This is a heinous act. It just goes to show that the Taliban are ruthless killers who would do anything they can to stop progress in Afghanistan," State Department deputy spokesman Robert Wood told the daily press briefing in Washington.

In other incidents, 10 Taliban were reported killed in clashes, one near the town of Lashkar Gah which has come under repeated attack in the past week.

The Helmand government claimed 34 had been killed but the defence ministry said only six bodies were found.