Taliban say killed kidnapped Turk in Afghanistan

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Sep 19 (Reuters) Taliban guerrillas said today they had killed a Turk kidnapped last month after the Turkish construction company he worked for ignored an ultimatum to leave Afghanistan.

The Taliban, fighting an intensified insurgency across the Afghan south and east, regard companies involved in reconstruction as supporting the US-led military involvement in the country.

A Taliban spokesman, Qari Mohammad Yousuf, said the Taliban had shot dead the Turk in the southern province of Helmand. His body had been dumped, he said.

''We killed him because the company failed to listen to our demand to pull out of Afghanistan,'' Yousuf said by telephone from an undisclosed location.

The Turk, who worked for a security firm, was abducted on August 28 in an ambush in Helmand. A Turkish engineer with the Ankara-based Kolin Insaat construction company was killed in the ambush, Turkish officials said.

The Interior Ministry and the Turkish embassy in Kabul said they were trying to check the Taliban claim. Turkish media identified the man as Mustafa Asimi.

Yousuf said on Saturday the Taliban were giving a 24-hour deadline for the company to pull out of Afghanistan or they would kill the man. He later said more time was being given for negotiations.

Dozens of road and telecommunications workers as well as aid workers, have been kidnapped, or killed or wounded in ambushes, in recent years. Some of those kidnapped have been freed.

The highest level of violence since the Taliban were ousted in 2001 has largely crippled aid and reconstruction work in much of the the south and east.

About 40,000 NATO and US-led troops are in Afghanistan trying to push back the Taliban and ensure enough security for development.

But the violence shows no sign of easing.

Nineteen people were killed in three separate blasts on Monday.

Among them were four Canadian soldiers, killed by a suicide bomber while they were bringing aid to villagers in a volatile southern district.

REUTERS DKA KP1633