Four health workers killed in explosion

At least four Afghan health workers were killed when their vehicle was hit by a land mine in the central province of Wardak, officials confirmed on Tuesday in the capital Kabul. The blast occurred on Monday in Jalrees district of Wardak province while the medical team was travelling towards Daikundi province, Abdullah Fahim, health ministry spokesman, told IRIN. “Among those who were killed were a doctor, two nurses and their driver, who were working for a local aid group, the Afghan Health Development Services (AHDS),” Fahim explained. While condemning the attack, Fahim said: ”There is no justification for such a cowardly attack on aid workers, but such heinous acts would not deter our relief activities in the area.” Taliban guerrillas attacked a convoy of provincial officials and police in southern Afghanistan and 11 Taliban and three policemen were killed, the government said on Tuesday. The attacks come after several days of some of the heaviest Taliban attacks since they were ousted in 2001 and just as NATO is bringing thousands of extra troops into the country. More than 250 people have been killed since last Wednesday, according to figures from the US military and Afghan authorities. Militants battling government and US-led coalition forces have conducted numerous attacks on aid workers and relief agencies in Afghanistan in recent months. On 12 May unidentified gunmen attacked a United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) vehicle in the western province of Herat, killing two aid workers and injuring another. In April, unidentified gunmen killed five health ministry workers, including nurses, doctors and a driver, in their clinic in the Qadis district of the northwestern province of Badghis. In 2005, a total of 31 aid workers were killed in different parts of the country; an increase over the 24 killed in 2004, according to the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office (ANSO), based in Kabul. More than 600 people, many of them militants, have been killed so far this year in various incidents in the war-ravaged nation, still recovering form over three decades of civil war and internal