Six Afghan Red Cross employees killed in Jowzjan
At least six Afghan employees of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) have been killed and two others gone missing in an attack by suspected terrorists of the Daesh Takfiri group in Afghanistan's northern province of Jowzjan.
Lotfullah Azizi, Jowzjan's provincial governor, said the suspected Daesh gunmen on Wednesday opened fire on a convoy of aid workers that was transporting supplies to areas struck by avalanches caused by deadly snowstorms.
"Daesh is very active in that area," the governor said.
The ICRC said it was putting its aid activities across the country "on hold" in the wake of the attack.
Despite the presence of thousands of foreign boots on the ground, Afghanistan has been rocked by a surge in terrorist attacks, some of them carried out by Daesh.
The rise of Daesh in Afghanistan has raised concerns in the Asian country that has already been torn apart by decades of Taliban-led militancy and the 2001 US-led invasion.
ICRC spokesman Thomas Glass said another two staff members remain unaccounted for in the aftermath of the Jowzjan attack. The aid group said it did not know who was behind the assault.
Jowzjan police chief Rahmatullah Turkistani said a search operation had been launched to find the two missing workers, adding that the bodies of the six slain employees had been brought to the provincial capital.
Taliban has denied any involvement in the attack.
Last month, a Spanish Red Cross employee was released after he was abducted by unidentified gunmen in northern Afghanistan on December 19. The staff member was kidnapped along with three Afghan colleagues when militants stopped their convoy between Mazar-i-Sharif and Kunduz. The Afghan employees were immediately released.
The death of the Red Cross workers came one day after a bomb attack killed at least 22 people outside the Supreme Court building in the capital, Kabul. Daesh claimed responsibility for the deadly blast.
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