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KABUL, Afghanistan: Two hundred Afghan police have been dispatched to search for two French aid workers and their three Afghan staff missing in southwestern Afghanistan, a provincial governor said Thursday.
The French man and woman, who work with the aid group Terre d'Enfance, left their office in Nimroz province on Tuesday morning and were traveling with their cook, driver and bodyguard, said provincial police chief Daud Askaryar.
A purported Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, said militants kidnapped the five in Nimroz province — a claim that could not be independently confirmed.
Nimroz Gov. Ghulam Dastagir said 200 policemen were searching houses in Khash Rod district, where the French workers' car was last seen. Nimroz officials have not heard from the Taliban or the missing people, he said.
Ahmadi, who spoke by phone to an Associated Press reporter from an unknown location, named the kidnapped Afghans as Mohammad Rasoul, Zahir Shah and Abdullah. All five were in one vehicle when they were captured and are being held by militants in Nimroz, he said.
Taliban militants will conduct an investigation, and the group's higher authorities will decide what to do with them, Ahmadi said.
Terre d'Enfance is an organization that works on children's education projects in Afghanistan, and the group has been working in Nimroz for four years, Dastagir said.
The purported kidnapping comes one month after Italian reporter Daniel Mastrogiacomo of the Italian daily La Repubblica and two Afghan colleagues were kidnapped by the Taliban in Helmand province.
Mastrogiacomo was released March 19 after the Afghan government released five Taliban prisoners, an exchange that Afghan lawmakers, analysts and international workers criticized.
Mastrogiacomo's translator, Ajmal Nashqbandi, is still being held. His driver was beheaded.
The Taliban last week also claimed to have kidnapped four missing Afghan medical workers and their driver in Kandahar province. The Taliban said the Afghan government would have to release prisoners before the medical workers would be freed.
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On the Web: http://terre.enfance.free.fr/english/
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