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JALAW GIR, Afghanistan - Gunmen stormed a camp of sleeping Chinese road workers Thursday in northern Afghanistan, killing at least 11 workers and an Afghan guard in the deadliest attack on foreign civilians since the fall of the Taliban.
The contractors were attacked about 1 a.m. at their desert camp near Jalaw Gir in Kunduz province, 120 miles north of Kabul.
Mutaleb Beg, the Kunduz police chief, said six to eight assailants killed an Afghan guard at the unfenced camp and then opened fire on the Chinese men as they slept in two tents.
"They died in their beds, most of them with stomach and head wounds," Beg told the Associated Press after visiting the scene.
Afghanistan's embassy in Beijing identified the 11 slain Chinese, saying nine died on the spot and two more at a hospital. Four others who were injured were in stable condition, the embassy.
A spokesman for NATO-led peacekeepers who patrol the area said the toll could rise as reports come in from local clinics.
It was unclear who carried out the attack.
A purported Taliban spokesman, Hamid Agha, said the ousted Islamic militia was not involved. "It doesn't have any link with the Taliban," Agha told the AP.
Beg said no one was arrested, but raised suspicions about supporters of renegade Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who has teamed with the Taliban and vowed to oust the government of President Hamid Karzai.
The killings are the latest in a string of deadly attacks on relief workers, private contractors and government employees, which officials say are an attempt to derail planned September elections. Road workers have been a particularly enticing target.
Several thousand foreigners work in Afghanistan, including U.N. staff, relief workers, private contractors and their security staff, embassy employees and consultants. Many manage projects critical to the country's reconstruction, from rebuilding its roads and hospitals to modernizing government ministries. Most work in the capital, where they are less vulnerable.
Last week, three European medical relief workers and two Afghans were killed in an ambush in northwestern Badghis province claimed by the Taliban.
Both Badghis and Kunduz previously were viewed as relatively peaceful, and relief agencies fear militants are expanding their operations from the insurgency-plagued south and east.
A small contingent of German troops is based in Kunduz. The rest of the 6,400-strong international force is based in Kabul.
The contractors worked for the China Railway Shisiju Group, which last year won a World Bank contract to rebuild the highway from Doshi to the Tajik border.
The $22.5-million project is part of an ambitious plan to restore Afghan infrastructure shattered by more than two decades of fighting. Road workers have also been attacked in the south.