A British man working in Afghanistan has been shot dead in Kabul, Afghan police and the British foreign ministry said today.
Steve Macqueen - an adviser to Afghanistan's minister for rural affairs, reconstruction and development - was shot while driving in a main Kabul street last night, police said, adding that they had made no arrests yet.
Officials said they did not yet know of a motive for the killing.
A Western security source said Mr Macqueen had been driving a white four-wheel drive of the kind used by UN and aid agency workers and was shot at by an assailant in a passing car.
A spokesman for the ousted Taliban regime, which has threatened to kill foreign workers in the country, said he did not know if guerrillas allied to the movement were responsible.
UN officials estimate 2,000 Western foreigners are based in Afghanistan, most of them diplomats or aid workers.
More than 1,000 people, most of them Afghans, have been killed since mid-2003 in a violent campaign by remnants of the Taliban. Mr Mcqueen is the fourth foreigner to be killed in the capital in the past year.