Afghan says attack on Chinese wasn't terrorism
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-07-02 11:27

Local rivalries, not a terrorist attack, appear responsible for the killing of 11 Chinese road workers this month, Afghanistan's interior minister said Thursday.

The attack, in which gunmen sprayed bullets at tents where dozens of Chinese road workers slept, was the deadliest on foreigners since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. Government officials have arrested 10 people in the shooting, saying they are linked to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, an Islamist warlord allied with the Taliban.

Taliban officials have denied responsibility for the attack, and the interior minister, Ali Ahmad Jalali, seemed to concur.

Mr. Jalali said Thursday that he had made no final determination of the cause of the killings, which occurred in the usually peaceful province of Kunduz, but he discounted the idea that it was terrorism.

"I can say this much, that it seems this action is not an action by terrorists,'' he said. "But there are some other factors like some competitions that might have caused this.''

Also related to the attack on the Chinese, Mr. Jalali said, was a remote-controlled bomb thought to be aimed at German workers that instead killed four Afghans.

Earlier news reports quoted Muhammad Omar, governor of Kunduz, as saying the attack may have been caused by a business rivalry. The victims worked for a state-owned Chinese construction contractor that had won a World Bank contract to repair a 140-mile section of the road.

Mr. Omar and other officials in Kunduz could not be reached for comment Thursday night.