Two foreign and one Afghan employees of the international courier company DHL were killed in a shoot-out in the heart of the Afghan capital Kabul today, an interior ministry official said.
Officials said they did not know the nationality of the victims, nor the motive behind the attack, which comes amid rising violence in Afghanistan and less than a week after a woman British aid worker was killed in another part of Kabul.
But it appeared the latest killings may not have been a targeted attack.
"It was an encounter between Afghan guards and foreigners of the company," an interior ministry source said on condition of anonimity.
He said Afghan and foreign employees of the company were being questioned about the incident, but so far there was no information on what may have led to the shoot-out.
A spokesman for Deutsche Post, which owns DHL, confirmed an attack took place at about 08.30 local time outside the DHL building in Kabul.
He had no information about the nationality of the victims but they were not Germans, he said, adding the company was working with local authorities to clear up what happened.
Police at the scene covered the silver sports utility vehicle with plastic sheeting. There was blood on the ground and two bullet holes in the window of the DHL office.
The Iranian embassy lies opposite the site of the attack and headquarters of the national intelligence agency is close by.
The latest attack, the killing of the British aid worker and a number of high profile kidnappings in the Afghan capital in
the last week, come after President Hamid Karzai appointed a new interior minister, responsible for policing, in an effort to clean up widespread corruption at the ministry.
Reuters