KABUL: Two Afghan security guards have been killed after international forces raided the offices of a transportation company in Kabul, a senior police officer said Friday.
“Foreign forces have conducted an operation in district four of Kabul city in which two private guards of the business were killed,” Mohammad Zahir, the city police’s chief of criminal investigations, told AFP. He added that the guards worked for a private security company which provided services at Tiger International, a transportation business, and that a police investigation into what had happened was under way.
Two people were also injured in the incident, which came as troops searched for evidence of activity by violent extremists, Zahir added. It is thought they may have gone to the wrong address. A spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) referred media questions about the incident to intelligence agency the Afghan National Directorate of Security, which was not immediately contactable. District four of Kabul is a mixed business and residential neighbourhood which is seen as being relatively peaceful.
Responsibility for policing in Kabul — which is calmer and more stable than many other areas of the country, particularly the south — has largely been in the hands of the Afghan police since 2008.
In a separate incident in the city Friday, a bomb exploded underneath an Afghan National Army (ANA) vehicle but there were no casualties. ISAF has some 140,000 troops in Afghanistan, two-thirds of which are from the United States, fighting a nine-year insurgency by the Taliban.
In August, President Hamid Karzai ordered the closure of all private security companies in Afghanistan.
But after months of pressure from Western allies, he backtracked in October, saying he would let dozens of “legal” firms operate, although under tougher regulations. It is thought that the guards who died worked for a firm deemed legal by officials.
