The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Ahern, has called for the immediate release of an Irish woman and two other UN workers who have been kidnapped in Afghanistan. Ms Annetta Flanigan, Richill, Co Armagh, was part of a joint UN- Afghan team overseeing this month's presidential election when she and her colleagues were abducted at gunpoint yesterday from a car, writes Carl O'Brien.
The other two UN workers were Mr Anjelito Nayan, a Filipino, and Ms Shqipe Hebibi, from Kosovo.
Ms Flanigan, believed to be in her late 30s, was due to return to Northern Ireland on holidays at Christmas with her Spanish husband, Mr José María Aranaz, a senior official with the UN's Kabul-based Joint Electoral Management Body.
Ms Nuala Haughey, a former Irish Times journalist who has been working with the EU's Democracy and Election Support Mission in Afghanistan, yesterday recalled seeing Ms Flanigan just days ago.
"She was a nice, unassuming woman who seemed close to her family," Ms Haughey said. "She was well travelled and had a lot of experience in working for the UN and met her husband while in Rwanda."
Ms Flanigan, a solicitor, had been planning to continue working in Afghanistan until next year's planned parliamentary elections. She has been working for several years with various UN bodies.
Relatives who run a furniture business in Armagh were unavailable for comment last night.
Witnesses in Kabul reported seeing up to seven armed men stop a UN vehicle, beat the Afghan driver and push the three women at gunpoint into a four-wheel-drive pick-up truck.
Suspicion for the kidnapping fell immediately on Islamic militants. The commander of a breakaway Taliban faction known as the Jaish- e-Muslimeen has claimed responsibility for the abduction.
"The three foreigners have been kidnapped by us," the group's spokesman, Mullah Ishaq Manzoor, told Reuters. "We are taking them to some safe place outside Kabul."
The kidnapping has sparked fears among the foreign community in Kabul that militants have begun to copy tactics used by insurgents in Iraq. Afghan police and international peacekeepers have launched a security sweep of Kabul. Helicopters circled the capital yesterday and roadblocks were set up on roads leading out of the city.
British government officials were last night in contact with Ms Flanigan's family. She holds dual British and Irish citizenship.
The British foreign secretary, Mr Jack Straw, said the kidnapping was not the beginning of a trend. "I have no reason to believe it will be anything other than unusual for the future."
Mr Ahern, meanwhile, said Department officials were monitoring the situation closely. "I condemn unreservedly this kidnapping and call for the immediate and unconditional release of those taken," he said.