Enlarge imageSPIN BOLDAK, Afghanistan (Reuters) - A Taliban spokesman said on Monday four foreigners kidnapped in Afghanistan had been executed on the orders of Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.
An official at the Ecolog services company in Kabul said four of its workers from Macedonia had gone missing in southern Afghanistan.
The company official, who identified himself as just Jalal, initially said the four were Albanian but later said they were ethnic Albanians from Macedonia.
He declined to comment on the Taliban claim.
The reported killing of the four comes during a wave of Taliban violence aimed at overthrowing President Hamid Karzai’s Western-backed government and forcing out foreign troops.
The Taliban said they kidnapped the four in the Afghan south on Saturday. The Taliban said three were Albanian and one was German.
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The company had told Macedonia three were from the western mainly ethnic Albanian town of Tetovo, and the fourth from the capital, Skopje, a Macedonian Foreign Ministry official said.
Taliban spokesman Qari Mohammad Yousuf said the four had been killed and their bodies had been dumped in the Kandahar-Helmand area of the south.
There was no independent confirmation of the claim.
Yousuf said on Sunday the fugitive Taliban leader had ordered the four to be killed.
"These people had come to Afghanistan at America’s behest, therefore they should be sentenced to death," Yousuf quoted the order as saying.
In the past, the Taliban have labelled as U.S. spies kidnapped employees of companies and non-government organisations involved in Afghanistan’s reconstruction.
Authorities in Kandahar said a search was underway for the kidnapped men, who had been travelling in two vehicles when they were kidnapped.
The Ecolog official earlier said his company, which is a cleaning contractor, would be willing to pay ransom for the release of the four.
U.S.-led forces overthrew the Taliban government in late 2001, after its leadership refused to surrender Osama bin Laden following al Qaeda’s September 11 attacks on the United States.
The insurgents have killed several foreigners after kidnapping them, including a Briton involved in a road project who was found dead in September and an Indian killed in November.
