UN suspends road travel after attacks

KABUL: The United Nations (UN) suspended road missions in parts of southern Afghanistan after five police were wounded and a group of Afghan aid workers were tied up and beaten by unidentified attackers, a UN spokesman said yesterday.

The two separate attacks occurred on Tuesday in Maywand district in Kandahar province, UN spokesman David Singh told reporters in Kabul.

In the first incident, insurgents equipped with rocket launchers, grenades and heavy machine guns opened fire on a police checkpoint, wounding five police in a 45-minute gunfight.

Later the same night, attackers tied up 10 Afghan staff from a local aid group, Co-ordination Humanitarian Assistance, at their offices and severely beat them, Singh said. The violence came after the aid workers refused to hand over keys to several newly purchased vehicles, he said. Three of the vehicles were set ablaze.

Road missions were suspended after the attacks in Maywand, Singh said.

The UN routinely suspends road travel after security incidents to protect staff. Currently, it has ordered its staff to avoid road missions to the southern provinces of Uruzgan and Zabul, as well as northern parts of Helmand and Kandahar.

The violence was the latest in a series of attacks on aid workers, foreign troops and Afghan soldiers in southern and eastern Afghanistan in recent months.

In another report, NATO spokesman Mark Laity told a news conference yesterday that it is willing to discuss expanding peacekeeping operations in Afghanistan beyond Kabul after it takes command of the force today, but it wants to settle down in the job first.

"Our first priority will be to settle in and do the existing job before we start immediately looking for more jobs," Laity said.

In its first ever operation outside Europe, NATO will take over Kabul's 5,000-strong International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) amid repeated calls from the US-backed government and the UN for its expansion to the provinces to ensure security for elections in June.

Outgoing ISAF commander Lieutenant-General Norbert Van Heyst will transfer command to another German three-star general, Goetz Gliemeroth, from NATO command.

German Defence Minister Peter Struck, who will attend the ceremony, has called for peacekeeping to be expanded beyond Kabul after Germany and Holland hand over their joint command to NATO.

Laity, a special representative of NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson, said he was aware of the pleas but the issue had yet to be formally debated.