UN workers are beaten up by Taliban supporters

War against terrorism: Afghanistan

The United Nations, already mourning the deaths of four of its workers killed by US air strikes on Kabul on Tuesday, suffered a blow from the other side in the Afghan conflict Wednesday when other UN mine-clearance employees were beaten up by pro-Taliban militants in three cities.

A UN spokeswoman in Pakistan said UN de-mining staff had been beaten up in Kabul, Kandahar and Jalalabad, cities controlled by the Taliban which are being targeted by US air strikes. The assailants seized three ambulances and a pickup truck in Kandahar, the Taliban headquarters. "We have received reports that the UN Mine Action Programme and the NGOs working with them are increasingly being targeted," said Stephanie Bunker.

Wednesday's attacks came after four security guards at a UN-funded mine-clearing operation were killed on Monday night during the US bombing of Kabul, when a Tomahawk missile crashed into the office building. The building where they worked was only a few hundred yards from one of the night's targets, a transmission tower.

The US said it was possible that a missile had gone astray.

UN offices are the most visible symbol of the West in Afghanistan, following the evacuation of international staff, two days after the 11 September terror attacks. Hundreds of Afghan employees remained behind, attempting to continue delivering food and other humanitarian aid.

Eric Falt, the UN spokesman in Islamabad, said: "Our task is becoming more difficult day by day. What we see is shrinking operational environment for all UN agencies."

On Monday, members of the Taliban broke into the premises of the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Assistance (UNOCHA) in the northern town of Mazar-I-Sharif and took away communications equipment.

Amid the rampant anti-American feeling in the Taliban-controlled cities, refugees reaching Pakistan from Jalalabad said they had heard stories that in Kabul the Taliban had confiscated and burnt rations airdropped inside the country.

The Taliban said angry Afghans were burning the food from America rather than eating it.

As the anger has spilt over into refugee communities across the border in Pakistan, protesters burnt part of the building of the UN Children Fund on Monday in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta and broke windows of the nearby UN refugee agency.