Five Afghan health workers killed in attack

By Sayed Salahuddin

KABUL (Reuters) – Unidentified gunmen killed five Afghan
health workers at a remote clinic in the northwestern province
of Badghis, the provincial governor said on Monday.

Taliban insurgents are not known to be active in the area
but there have been several recent attacks in the generally
peaceful north and west, part of a surge in violence blamed on
the insurgents fighting foreign troops and the government.

“Five Health Ministry workers including nurses, doctors and
a driver were killed when gunmen fired at them in their clinic
last night,” said the governor, Enayatullah Enayat.

“Only enemies of Afghanistan would resort to this type of
act,” he said.

Government officials often refer to Taliban and their
Islamist militant allies as “enemies of Afghanistan.” Drug
gangs and other criminals are also responsible for some
violence, officials say.

Five workers of the Medecins Sans Frontieres medical aid
group, three foreigners and two Afghans, were killed in an
ambush in Badghis in 2004. Officials said at the time Taliban
insurgents were responsible.

A Health Ministry official blamed terrorists. “It’s a
terrorist attack to intimidate people working with the
government side,” said the official, Abdullah Fahim.

The attackers also set fire to the clinic, he said.

The Taliban have regularly attacked aid workers and road
construction crews saying their work is supporting the
government and foreign forces. About 30 aid workers were killed
last year.

A recent surge in suicide-bomb blasts and other violence
followed a Taliban announcement they had launched a spring
offensive and comes as NATO members are preparing to send
thousands more peacekeepers.

In other incidents on Monday, two policemen were killed and
two wounded by a roadside bomb in the southern province of
Helmand. The driver of a truck supplying a foreign military
base was killed in an ambush in the same province, police said.

There have been three suicide car-bomb attacks on Afghan
and foreign military bases since Friday.

ATTACKS INCREASING

Britain, Canada and the Netherlands are leading a NATO
expansion into the dangerous south as the United States hopes
to cut its Afghan force by several thousand to about 16,500.

Critics in some NATO countries say the troops risk getting
bogged down in a relentless insurgency fueled in part by the
drugs trade. Most Afghans say they want foreign troops to stay
until their army and police can ensure security.

The U.S. military says the insurgents are unable to mount
large-scale guerrilla attacks, after suffering heavy losses
this time last year, and are resorting to bombs to break the
will of the people and Afghanistan’s foreign backers.

“It’s just straight fact, the numbers are increasing,
they’re increasing in the form of an IED or different tactic,”
U.S. military spokesman Colonel Jim Yonts told a briefing,
referring to so-called improvised explosive devices and other
bomb attacks.

“It is something very hard to combat … it take more than
just a military approach,” said Yonts, speaking before news of
the attack on the clinic broke.

“It’s not just an Afghan problem, it’s a regional issue.
This is a transnational, borderless enemy.”

The insurgents also knew they were running out of time with
NATO reinforcements on the way and Afghan forces getting
stronger, Yonts said.

U.S.-led forces had killed two Taliban commanders in
Helmand on Friday and Saturday, he said. He declined to
identify them, citing operational security.