Two Afghan aid workers missing: police

KABUL - An Afghan doctor and a driver from a German aid group are missing in northern Afghanistan and police are investigating whether they have been kidnapped, a police commander said on Friday.
KinderBerg International, which helps disabled Afghan children, said two of its workers had disappeared while travelling between the capital Kabul and the northern province of Kunduz.
The pair’s vehicle was found abandoned in Chaharikar, the capital of Parawan province, about 60 kilometres (40 miles) north of Kabul, police said.
“We found the vehicle of the NGO workers and they were missing. Right now we don’t know what has happened to them,” provincial police chief Khalilullah Ziayee told AFP.
“We’ve launched an investigation into the case and are trying to find out whether they have been kidnapped or not. There’s a strong possibility that they’ve been kidnapped,” the police chief added.
He did not say who would be the likely culprits if they had been snatched, but Taliban militants have abducted foreign nationals and those Afghans working with them in the past.
The aid group named the pair as Abdul Rab, a 44-year-old doctor and his driver, Abdul Hafiz.
In the biggest kidnapping of foreign nationals, the Taliban abducted 23 South Korean Christians in July last year in the southern province of Ghazni, a hotbed of Taliban insurgency.
The Islamic rebels killed two of the hostages before releasing the rest in a secret deal with Seoul.
Around the same time two German nationals were also kidnapped by the Taliban, who killed one of them and freed the other after months in captivity.
Germany has about 3,200 troops operating under the NATO’s International Security Assistance Force and most of them are based in Kunduz.