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.
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.
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.
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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.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/11/international/asia/11afgh.htmlOne of King George's biggest f*ck-ups: the Taliban still roams freely through Afghanistan, preventing any real rehabilitation.
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