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| Afghanistan/South Asia |
| Chinese murdered while they slept in tents |
| 2004-06-10 |
| Chinese workers who were sprayed with machine gun fire as they slept in tents pitched on the harsh plains of northern Afghanistan, had requested to have no more than two police guards, an official said Thursday. About 100 Chinese had been housed in the camp, along with dozens of vehicles and equipment needed for their work. Their tents had been pitched behind a large building which contained cooking and other facilities. ``Just two policemen were guarding the compound,’’ police chief General Abdul Alil Andrabi told an AFP reporter at the site. ``The Chinese themselves didn’t want to have more protection.’’ The victims were apparently shot at through a wire fence surrounding the tents. They were splattered with blood. Asked how long the attack had lasted, one Chinese worker who was packing his bags to leave Thursday, said: ``10 minutes.’’ Most of the workers arrived in Kunduz less than 24 hours earlier, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao told a briefing in Beijing. ``They were shot in their sleep. They were not protected,’’ he said. Jianchao said the tragedy ``should be a lesson for us.’’ ``We should take more effective measures to ensure the safety of Chinese nationals abroad,’’ he said. Initial investigations showed that the attackers came from the direction of Kunduz city, about 36 kilometres (22 miles) to the north, police chief Andrabi said. ``They stopped their vehicles about 200 or 300 metres from the camp, they walked to the camp and attacked the area,’’ he said. ``They left by their vehicles, also to the north.’’ It is not known who was responsible for the callous attack but all workers were being evacuated to Kunduz city for their safety, he added. ``The attackers could belong to three groups: Hezb-i Islami, Taliban or Al-Qaeda,’’ he said. Hezb-i-Islami is an Islamic fundamentalist group headed by fugitive warlord and former Afghan premier Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Acting Afghan President Mohammed Qasim Fahim also said he ``considers the network of Taliban, Al-Qaeda and their allies behind the incident.’’ ``I was sleeping in my truck when I heard some shooting,’’ he said. ``The shooting lasted for 10 or 15 minutes. A policeman who was guarding the base was one of the first to be shot. Just after the attack everything became silent and calm.’’ Several hours after the attack Afghan soldiers arrived from neighbouring Baghlan province to secure the area. By about 7:30 am they had been joined by German peacekeeping soldiers based in Kunduz. German Lieutenant Colonel Frank Sarach told AFP that the NATO-led peacekeepers had provided medical assistance to the group and were now securing the site. ``One of the injured is hospitalised at the PRT (German-run provincial reconstruction team) in Kunduz,’’ he said. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #1 "The attackers could belong to three groups: Hezb-i Islami, Taliban or Al-Qaeda." Izzoids.... why do they hate, uh, the Chinese? |
| Posted by: Wuzzalib 2004-06-10 4:20:53 PM |