Red Cross to Withdraw Foreign Workers from Afghanistan, 4 Killed in Blast

Local Editor

The International Committee of the Red Cross [ICRC] is removing some international staff and curtailing operations in Afghanistan following last week's fatal attack on their Jalalabad compound, a spokesman said on Tuesday.

The ICRC has held emergency meetings since the May 29 attack in the east of the country in which an Afghan guard was shot dead and three people, including one international staff member, were wounded.
Seven international staff were rescued from the compound by police as a group of suicide bombers and gunmen went on a rampage, shooting and throwing grenades at staff members.

Meanwhile, a roadside bomb killed a father and three of his children in western Afghanistan on Tuesday, the latest of a recent spate of civilian casualties in the 12-year war.
The United Nations mission in Kabul said on Monday that in the past two weeks, 125 Afghan civilians had been killed and 287 injured in the conflict, a 24 percent increase from the same period in 2012.

Insurgents were responsible for 84 percent of all civilian casualties, the UN said.
"A car hit an improvised explosive device in Lash Wa Juwayn district, killing four: a father and three of his children, one of them an infant," Abdul Rahman Zhwandai, spokesman for the governor of Farah province, where the attack took place said.
"The man's wife was wounded in the blast."

On Monday, a suicide bomb attack targeting NATO and Afghan forces killed two foreign soldiers and 10 children heading home after school in Paktia province, eastern Afghanistan.

That attack came hours after a roadside bomb killed seven members of a family in Laghman province.

Source: News agencies, Edited by website team