Red Crescent continues operations despite fatal attack on its staff

The Afghan Red Crescent Society (ARCS) is continuing operations in the troubled Zabul region of the country despite a fatal attack on one of its vehicles on Saturday which left one local employee dead and another injured, ARCS officials said on Monday. The attack took place in the Zabul provincial capital, Qalat. "We have not stopped our operations. We are currently reviewing security measures with local security organisations," Salim Bahramand, the ARCS director of international relations, told IRIN in Kabul. The ARCS attack is one of a series of attacks on aid agencies in the south and has added to growing concern among local and international aid workers, who have witnessed over a dozen workers killed in the last three weeks. In February three people were killed and one was injured after an attack on a helicopter belonging to the Louis Berger Group, the US firm overseeing the renovation of Kabul-Kandahar highway near the southern city of Kandahar. On 14 February, four Afghan workers from the local demining agency, OMAR, were murdered when their convey came under fire by unidentified men in the western Farah province. On 25 February another five aid workers belonging to SDF (Sanayee Development Foundation), a local NGO, were murdered after their vehicle was stopped during the night in Sarubi, just outside Kabul province, and they were executed on the spot. Saturday's incident, which killed the head ARCS provincial office as he was leaving work eight kilometers from Qalat, follows the murder of a Turkish road construction worker and a security guard, with two others kidnapped by attackers on Friday. According to Zabul province officials, the incident took place when the workers' vehicle was ambushed in Shah Joy district of Zabul. NGOs have already expressed outrage over these fatal attacks. On 26 February the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief (ACBAR), an umbrella organisation representing more than 90 national and international NGOs, called for accelerated efforts to expand the NATO-led 6,000-strong International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) outside the confines of Kabul. "Despite repeated warnings to the international community about deteriorating security, which has slowed down development as a whole over the last 18 months and stopped it altogether in some areas, we have still not seen an adequate response to the highly complex security situation that has developed, and the security gap continues to widen," ACBAR said. According to Bahramand, ARCS experienced the second fatal attack in a year when two of its staff-members - drivers - were shot dead by unidentified men during an emergency operation in a flood-affected area in the southern Ghazni province. ARCS is operating in all the 32 provinces of the country with health clinics and relief activities. The aid body is seen as an important source of delivering aid mostly in areas where there are no other NGOs. Zabul province officials have blamed remnants of the Taliban or forces loyal to renegade warlord and former Afghan prime minister Golboddin Hekmatyar.