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| Afghanistan |
| Gunmen kidnap French aid worker in Kabul |
| 2008-11-03 |
| Gunmen kidnapped a French aid worker off a neighborhood street Monday and killed an intelligence agency employee who tried to stop the abduction, police said, latest in a series of attacks against Westerners in the Afghan capital. Three assailants in a red Corolla tried to kidnap two French citizens riding in a small van in Kabul, but after a scuffle they got away with only one, said Mohammad Daud Amin, a police commander in the neighborhood where the abduction took place. "A resident tried to prevent this kidnapping. A kidnapper opened fire and killed him. They were able to kidnap one Frenchman," Amin told The Associated Press. The Interior Ministry identified the resident as the driver for the intelligence chief of Panjshir province. Etienne Gille, president of AFRANE, a French aid group focusing on education, said the kidnapping took place as a member of its staff and a man from a second French aid group were being driven from a residence rented by ARFANE to its offices. "The car was blocked by another car that was driving the wrong way," from which "an armed man emerged," Gille told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. AFRANE's employee managed to escape, while the other aid worker was taken, he said. "There was an Afghan on the street who intervened," Gille said. A witness, Mohammad Shafi, said the man who intervened lived in a house across from where the kidnapping occurred. "He grabbed the machine gun of one of the kidnappers, who opened fire, burning his hand. After that the kidnapper shot him three times in the chest," Shafi said. Gille declined to provide the name or organization for which the kidnapped man worked but said he was in his 30s. The man, a French national, had been in Afghanistan about a week, Gille said, adding he believed it was his first time in the country. |
| Posted by:ryuge |
| #1 Someone had an urge for crepes? |
| Posted by: Jack is Back! 2008-11-03 07:07 |