2 foreigners killed in Kabul

Security for Westerners in Afghanistan took a sharp turn for the worse Saturday when an Afghan security guard working for the international shipping firm DHL shot dead the company’s top two executives in the country before killing himself, authorities said.

The early-morning attack, which killed a Briton and a South African, was as symbolic as it was bloody. It targeted a major multinational corporation at a time when Afghanistan is hungry for foreign investment. And it took place in a prosperous district in the heart of the city even as Western military officials are trying to calm fears that Islamic militants are tightening a noose around the capital.

The shooting occurred only five days after a British female aid worker was gunned down on a Kabul street. It also raised the possibility that insurgents might be seeking to strike at Western interests by infiltrating international organizations’ private security services.

But police said that the circumstances of the attack, in which two other people were injured, remained murky.

The surge in violence could be intended to undermine Afghanistan’s new interior minister, Mohamad Hanif Atmar. He was appointed this month by President Hamid Karzai in a bid to stem blatant corruption at the Interior Ministry, which is responsible for law enforcement.

Police and witnesses said Saturday’s attack unfolded when the guard opened fire with an automatic rifle as an SUV carrying DHL’s country director and his deputy pulled up in front of the company’s headquarters downtown.

The office, which is across the street from the Iranian Embassy and not far from the headquarters of Afghanistan’s intelligence service, is in what had been regarded as a relatively secure part of the capital.

Security has deteriorated across much of Afghanistan as the Taliban movement, toppled in late 2001 by a U.S.-led invasion, has regrouped and rearmed itself.

Western military officials and diplomats say the violence is being driven not only by insurgents but also by criminal gangs, who are thought to be behind a recent flurry of abductions of foreigners. In the last week alone, three Turkish nationals were kidnapped in eastern Afghanistan and two Bangladeshi aid workers were abducted in the south, authorities said Saturday.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for Monday’s shooting of British aid worker Gayle Williams, who was 34.

A Taliban spokesman accused Williams of trying to spread Christianity; proselytizing is a crime in Afghanistan. The slain woman’s sister, Karen Williams, who was visiting Kabul on Saturday, told journalists that her sister’s only motivation had been to better the lives of children with disabilities.

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laura.king@latimes.com