Taliban Suspected in Killing of 11 Chinese Workers

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Taliban Suspected in Killing of 11 Chinese WorkersBy CARLOTTA GALL

Published: June 11, 2004


<>ANDAHAR, Afghanistan, June 10 - The massacre of 11 Chinese road construction workers and an Afghan guard as they slept in their tents early Thursday was the deadliest against foreigners since the fall of the Taliban and dealt a setback to United States efforts to stabilize the country ahead of elections scheduled for September. </P>
<>The men were among more than 100 Chinese engineers and construction workers who had recently arrived in Afghanistan to work on a World Bank project to rebuild a road running north from Kabul to the Tajikistan border. Some of those killed Thursday had been in Afghanistan only a few days, the Chinese news agency reported. </P>
<>The attack occurred at 1:30 a.m. about 20 miles south of Kunduz, in the normally peaceful northern part of the county, Afghan officials said. A group of some 20 gunmen in cars attacked the men as they slept, the spokesman for the Interior Ministry, Lutfullah Mashal, said.</P>
<>The Afghan guard and nine Chinese men were killed immediately in the attack. Two more Chinese men died in the hospital later. Four other Chinese workers were wounded and being treated in a Kunduz hospital and by German members of a peacekeeping force based in the town, said the Kunduz police chief, Gen. Abdul Mutalibeg. A second Afghan guard was missing, he said. </P>
<>Coming after the murder of five aid workers last week in northwestern Afghanistan, the assault, which Afghan officials attributed to the Taliban, may indicate that the gunmen are shifting their attacks to northern Afghanistan, which has been relatively free of violence. President Hamid Karzai and Gen. David Barno, the commander of the American-led forces in Afghanistan, have recently warned that attacks on aid workers, government officials and foreign military forces will increase in the months ahead of the elections. United States troop deployments have been increased recently to 20,000, in part to help with security ahead of the voting. </P>
<>A senior Afghan military commander in southern Afghanistan, Hajji Mir Wali, said Mullah Dadullah, one of the top Taliban commanders, recently issued orders to his fighters to strike at road builders. "His orders were: 'First, you have to kill engineers to stop the building of the roads. Second, you have to burn schools and spread out leaflets. Third, you have to put mines and attack government officials; and fourth, if you can, you have to attack American forces,' " Mr. Wali said. He said he was told of the orders by a member of the Taliban who was present at the meeting in which they were issued.</P>
<>General Mutalibeg said the people responsible were probably "remnants of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and people of Hesb-e-Islami of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar," referring to a renegade mujahedeen commander who is on the United States list of wanted terrorists and who has declared a war against foreign forces in Afghanistan.</P>
<>Gen. Muhammad Daoud, the military commander in the north, said the attack appeared timed to coincide with the opening of the first two miles of the road on Thursday. "This is an action to destroy the reconstruction process of Afghanistan," he said. "Our enemies want to destabilize the situation here as they did in the south of Afghanistan." </P>
<>The government of Afghanistan also sent generals from the Defense Ministry and the National Security Directorate, the Afghan intelligence service, to lead an investigation. </P>
<>The Taliban did not immediately claim responsibility for the attack, as it has with previous incidents. </P>
<P>A spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Liu Jianchao, said the workers were members of a railroad construction company that has 123 people in Afghanistan. He condemned the attack as a "brutal terrorist act," and vowed that Chinese civil engineering projects there would continue. "China will not give in to any terrorism," he said.</P>
<P>The Chinese workers were from the China Railway Shisiju Group Corporation, based in Jinan, in eastern China, a World Bank spokesman said. </P>
<P>The United States Embassy in Kabul said it was "deeply shocked and saddened" by the killings. "We condemn those who carried out this cowardly attack on these individuals who were working to assist the people of Afghanistan," an embassy statement said. </P>
<P>The United Nations suspended all movement of personnel out of Kunduz and suspended its voter registration work there, a spokesman said.</P>

江南春晓

我真是看天文！不过认得出一个“路”字，哈哈哈。

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<B>以下是引用<I>江南春晓</I>在2004-6-11 19:33:00的发言：</B>
我真是看天文！不过认得出一个“路”字，哈哈哈。

<>that is good, if you read seriously, you will know much more words, then sentences, then articles.</P>

折翼孔雀

<>IF I AM FREE I WILL COME~~~~WILL ANYBODY GO WITH ME~~</P>