Guterres condemns deadly attack on UN vehicle in Kabul

UNITED NATIONS－United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Sunday condemned an attack on a UN vehicle in Kabul, Afghanistan. The world body said the attack killed a UN employee and injured two others on Sunday.

Guterres expressed "his deepest condolences" to the family of the victim and wished a swift recovery to the injured, his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in a statement.

Afghan Interior Ministry spokesman Nasrat Rahimi said that aside from the one death reported, officials counted five people as wounded in the grenade attack on the vehicle.

In the statement condemning the attack, the UN said the two people injured in the blast were its employees－an Afghan and a worker from an undisclosed foreign country.

The secretary-general called on the Afghan authorities to spare no effort to identify and quickly bring to justice the perpetrators of this attack, Dujarric said.

He reaffirmed the UN's commitment to assisting the government and the people of Afghanistan as the country strives for sustainable peace and development, the statement said.

On Monday, Afghan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani had also denounced the attack.

The attack happened on a road frequently used by UN vehicles shuttling workers between central Kabul and a large UN compound on the outskirts of the capital.

"At around 6:20 pm a grenade was hurled at a UN vehicle," Rahimi said. The nationalities of those caught up in the explosion were not released.

The UN statement said: "It is with profound sadness that the UN family in Afghanistan confirms the killing tonight of a colleague, as well as injuries to two others, when a UN-marked vehicle was attacked in Kabul."

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but the Taliban and the Islamic State group are active in the capital and have claimed responsibility for previous attacks.

The Taliban control or hold sway over about half of Afghanistan, staging near-daily attacks that target Afghan forces and government officials across the country.

The blast came during what has been a period of relative calm in Kabul, where the rate of large attacks has dropped in recent weeks.

The comparative lull followed a bloodstained presidential campaign season that ended with a general election nearly two months ago.

But Afghans are still waiting for the results of that Sept 28 poll, with a recount bogged down by various technical difficulties and complaints from the main candidates.

Aid agencies and nongovernmental groups are sometimes targeted in Afghanistan's war.

In May, the Taliban attacked Counterpart International, a US-funded nonprofit group working with marginalized people. Nine people were killed in that assault.

But the UN's white vehicles are rarely involved in attacks and circulate routinely around Kabul and in the provinces.

In 2011, seven foreign UN workers were killed in an attack on a UN compound in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.