Taliban attack on aid agency: 3 killed

The two-hour attack on the compound of the Voluntary Association for the Rehabilitation of Afghanistan in Delaram, a town in the western province of Farah, began before dawn.

The aid group's director Najmuddin Mojadidi said two guards of the agency were killed along with another working for an Indian firm that shares the compound.

He said one his guards was missing and three working for the Indian firm upgrading the town's main road link were critically wounded. He declined to name the Indian firm.

A Taliban spokesman, Abdul Latif Hakmim, confirmed the guerrillas had carried out the attack, but said the intended target was a military post next to the aid agency compound.

Mojadidi said 20 guerrillas took part in the attack about 620km southwest of the capital Kabul. An official of the Afghanistan NGO Security Office said as many as 40 guerrillas could have been involved.

"They fired heavy machineguns and rocket-propelled grenades," Mojadidi said.

The Afghan aid agency has been running agricultural projects in Farah funded by various UN agencies since the 1990s and has been attacked in the past by suspected Taliban guerrillas.

The radical Islamic Taliban movement has declared a holy war against US-led foreign forces in Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai's government and local and foreign aid workers.

More than 1,000 people, including dozens of aid workers, have been in killed in militant-related violence since August last year that has severely disrupted aid work in the south and east where the Taliban and their Islamic allies are most active.

The Taliban vowed to disrupt presidential elections held last month and won by US-backed incumbent Hamid Karzai, but these passed off relatively peacefully.