Concern workers face Taliban death threat

Foreign aid workers - including those from Irish aid group Concern - have taken shelter in a hotel in the Pakistani city of Quetta after warnings Taliban rebels were planning suicide attacks against their offices.

Some 25 expatriates from the United Nations and Western aid groups have left their residences and moved to the Serena Hotel – just days after suspected Taliban gunmen killed five aid workers in neighbouring Afghanistan.

On Saturday a Pakistani government agency, responsible for security at refugee camps in south-western Baluchistan province, alerted the UN refugee agency and five other non-governmental organisations to the suspected threat.

A letter sent by the agency to the aid groups identified the main planner as a previously unknown Taliban, Mullah Hashim Sagzai, who is believed to live in a refugee camp in Baluchistan.

It said Sagzai’s operatives were hoping to gain access to the aid groups’ premises to stage a suicide bombing.

The head of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees office in Quetta said they were taking the warning seriously and had forced UN agencies and the Western aid groups to suspend operations in the area.

Police were outside the hotel today, checking cars entering for weapons.

As well as Concern, the aid groups warned of the Taliban plot were UNHCR, the US-based Mercy Corps International, British-based Global Partner, the French Tear Fund, and the Association of Medical Doctors of Asia.

Taliban insurgents are suspected of attacking aid workers in Afghanistan.

On Wednesday, three foreign and two Afghan workers for the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Medecins Sans Frontieres were shot and killed in north-western Afghanistan.

A convoy of UN election workers in south-eastern Afghanistan was ambushed on a road but managed to escape unharmed after seeking help from US-led forces.