Seven Afghan drug-eradication workers have been killed and three wounded in an ambush by angry opium poppy growers in a remote central region of Afghanistan.
Tribal and Frontier Affairs Minister Mohammad Arif Noorzaye said they were killed on Saturday in Uruzgan province on their way to destroy some poppy fields.
"Local farmers were behind the ambush," Mr Noorzaye said. Farmers involved in the attack might have been Shi'ite Muslim Hazara people, he said; the anti-drug workers were Sunni Muslims from the ethnic Pashtun majority.
Old ethnic rivalries have resurfaced in some parts of he country since the hardline Taliban were driven from power in a US-led attack in late 2001.
It was the second attack in five days on Sunni Pashtuns in Uruzgan, a mountainous region largely populated by Pashtuns with pockets of Hazaras.
Nine Sunnis were killed and six wounded in the earlier attack allegedly carried out by Hazaras. One official said that attack was aimed at stirring up sectarian conflict.
The new government has vowed to eradicate drug production - in particular opium poppies that are used to make heroin - and there has been violent resistance to some eradication efforts.