Briton among three killed in Kabul shooting

By Sayed Salahuddin

KABUL (Reuters) - One British and one South African employee of the international courier company DHL, together with an Afghan guard, were killed in a shooting in the heart of the Afghan capital on Saturday, officials said.

Police said they were questioning DHL employees but were not yet sure of the motive for the violence, which comes amid a rising tide of attacks and less than a week after Taliban militants killed a British aid worker in another part of Kabul.

"We can now confirm that a British and a South African national were killed in a shooting incident in Kabul," said a British Foreign Office spokeswoman. "We are in contact with the Afghan police to establish the circumstances."

Taliban insurgents have launched a number of attacks inside Kabul, but an Afghan Interior Ministry official said the Saturday shooting did not appear to be politically motivated.

"It was an encounter between Afghan guards and foreigners of the company," a ministry source said on condition of anonymity.

A spokesman for Deutsche Post, which owns DHL, confirmed the attack took place at about 0830 local time outside the DHL offices in Kabul. The company was working with local authorities to find out what happened, he said.

If the Taliban do turn out to have been responsible for Saturday's attack, the hundreds of foreign aid workers in the city are likely to severely restrict their movements.

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