KABUL, Afghanistan — Gunmen ambushed a car carrying Afghan civilians working on a remote U.S. military base in eastern Afghanistan and killed eight of them execution-style, a police official said Friday.
The victims, who worked for the U.S. military as labourers in the mountainous Korangal area of Kunar province, were killed Thursday while driving home from work, said Abdul Saboor, Kunar's deputy police chief.
Gunmen stopped the workers' car, searched them and took about $6,000 before gunning them down, said Salehzai Didar, Kunar's governor. Two workers escaped, he said.
“This was a shocking attack against these poor people,” said Mr. Saboor, who did not identify the attackers other than to describe them as “the enemy.”
Afghanistan this year has faced its deadliest surge in violence since U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban regime five years ago for hosting Osama bin Laden.
U.S. and Afghan troops, meanwhile, raided a compound linked to bomb makers early Friday, killing one suspected militant and detaining four others, the U.S.-led coalition said.
During the operation in the eastern Khost province village of Bodakhel, one militant pointed a gun at soldiers, who shot him dead, a coalition statement said. Troops found explosives, detonation cords and multiple blasting caps. No U.S. or Afghan troops were hurt.
A suicide bomber also attacked Afghan soldiers in the country's east. In Khost's Ismailkheil district, a suicide bomber on foot targeted an Afghan National Army patrol on Friday, wounding five soldiers and three civilians, said Mohammed Ayub, the provincial police chief.
On Thursday, suicide bombings in the southern province of Helmand killed a British soldier, two children and a policeman.
NATO forces on Thursday killed five suspected insurgents in an airstrike in the country's east, the military alliance said. The strike in the Gayan district of Paktika province targeted a suspected Taliban encampment, NATO said in a statement. There were no civilian or NATO casualties, it said.
