Police search Kabul for kidnapped German woman

Aug 19, 2007, 12:15 GMT

Kabul - Afghan police were Sunday combing western Kabul for a female German aid worker who was snatched from the street by unknown gunmen a day earlier.

House searches were underway in the capital's seventh district where the 31-year-old was abducted as she left a restaurant and where her kidnapper's car was last spotted before the area was sealed off, Kabul police chief Alishah Paktiawal told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Roadblocks were also set up on key exit routes to prevent her abductors from moving her out of the city.

'We are searching every single car,' police major Shah Agha Noori said while manning a checkpoint on the main highway leading south to the Ghazni province, where Taliban kidnappers last month took 23 South Korean Christian aid workers hostages.

Officers were also questioning woman clothed in burqa head-to-toe veils and in some cases were requiring individuals to show their faces.

German government officials were holding talks with Afghan authorities about efforts to find the woman, who works for a Christian organisation called Ora International.

A Taliban spokesman earlier told dpa by telephone that the Islamic militia was kidnapping of the woman, who is believed to be pregnant.

There has been a rash of kidnappings in Afghanistan in recent months, especially since the abduction of an Italian journalist in March secured the release of five Taliban prisoners

Another German national, along with four Afghans, was also kidnapped on July 18 in the central province of Maidan Wardak. Negotiations are ongoing for his release and for the release of 19 Koreans still being held.

Two sick male Korean hostages were killed by the Taliban and two women released last week as a gesture of 'goodwill.'