U.N. halts some Afghan work

The United Nations suspended operations in southern and eastern Afghanistan on Monday after the killing of a French U.N. worker and a series of terrorist attacks.

In eastern Afghanistan, suspected al-Qaida terrorists attacked a contingent of U.S. and Afghan troops, sparking a firefight in which five fighters were killed Friday, a spokesman for the U.S. military said.

The attack occurred in the Barmal district of eastern Paktika province, Maj. Bryan Hilferty said.

At the United Nations, associate spokeswoman Marie Okabe announced the suspension of U.N. operations: mainly humanitarian relief, health care and refugees.

She said U.N. international staff from the southern provincial capital of Ghazni, where aid worker Bettina Goislard was killed Sunday, had been relocated to Kabul.

Afghan staffers in the city were confined to their compounds and homes, she said.

"We hope it's a temporary suspension, because as soon as we can get security clearance, we want to start resuming our assistance to the people," Okabe said.

Also Monday, the U.N. refugee agency barred staffers from traveling by road in Afghanistan while it reviewed operations.

"We certainly cannot allow our staff to be left at the mercy of those who are targeting us," said Filippo Grandi, a representative of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Afghanistan.

The United Nations is continuing its operations in the northern half of Afghanistan, including in the capital Kabul and the cities of Mazar-e-Sharif in the north and Herat in the west, she said.

There are about 800 U.N. international staffers in Afghanistan: more than 500 in Kabul and the rest in about a dozen locations, Okabe said.

She did not disclose how many were in the south and east but said only those in Ghazni had been relocated to Kabul. The rest were remaining in the region.

Goislard, 29, a widely respected refugee agency worker, was gunned down by two Afghan men on a motorcycle. She was the first U.N. foreign aid worker to be slain in Afghanistan since the Taliban regime was ousted by a U.S.-led coalition two years ago.

"It's pretty clear that it was a targeted attack. It was a clearly marked U.N. vehicle. She was obviously an expatriate and she was very well known in the community, because she was very active," said Maki Shinohara, the refugee agency's spokeswoman in Kabul. "This was done by someone who really wants to undermine all our efforts to build peace in this country."

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan called it "a vicious attack."

"To kill deliberately someone who was in Afghanistan to assist the people is something that no one can excuse - whatever the cause," he said.

Goislard's parents were planning to travel to Afghanistan to retrieve their daughter's body. The aid worker had told colleagues that if anything happened to her, she wished to be buried in Afghanistan, but that decision will be left to her parents, Shinohara said.

There was also a bomb attack Sunday on a U.N. vehicle in eastern Paktia province, though Okabe said no one was hurt.

On Nov. 11, a car bomb exploded outside U.N. offices in the southern city of Kandahar.

The security committee of the U.N. Staff Union, which represents over 5,000 U.N. staffers worldwide, expressed alarm at the "growing trend of deliberate attacks on aid workers in Afghanistan."

The committee urged Annan to not deploy new staff until a comprehensive security review is completed.

A U.N.-wide review of security is under way, though the world body vowed it would never be forced out of Afghanistan.

"We are not going to be reckless," Annan said. "It will entail some changes in the way we operate and I think we are beginning to take measures already."

In other developments, the U.S. and Afghan forces pursuing suspected Taliban insurgents through the steep, snow-covered mountains of eastern Afghanistan confiscated rockets, mortars and other ammunition, but did not clash with enemy fighters, the U.S. military said Monday.

Meanwhile, Daulat Khan, a provincial police chief, accused U.S. warplanes of bombing a vehicle Friday as it made its way on a road in Paktika province, killing six civilians.

There was no immediate reaction from the U.S. military.

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