Two Foreigners Found Dead in Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan – Two foreigners, one carrying a Swiss passport, were found dead in the Afghan capital Sunday after being hit over the head with stones or bricks, police said.

Police said the motive was unclear. But a Swiss official said the killing appeared to be criminal, rather than political, and that the men may have been tourists.

Joggers found the two bodies in a public garden in west Kabul (search), police said. Investigators later combed the park, where reporters saw a large patch of bloodstained asphalt.

Deputy Police Chief Khalil Aminzada said the two were wearing the baggy shirts and trousers and flat woolen hats favored by many Afghans and had entered Afghanistan (search) from Pakistan (search) 11 days ago.

Rudi Hager, the head of a Swiss development agency that doubles as a diplomatic mission, told The Associated Press that the Swiss victim was "not known in the international community. My guess is that he's a tourist."

Hager declined to identify the Swiss victim, and said no identification papers were found on the second man.

"It was probably just a criminal case," Hager said, though he was unable to say if they had been robbed or why the men were wearing Afghan clothes.

Nick Downie of the Afghan NGO Security Organization, which advises aid groups on safety, said both the victims were "white Caucasian males," but he had no further details.

Mohammed Nabi, another police official, said a sports coach and some of his charges found the bodies in the city's Chelsitun Garden at dawn and called the police.

A U.N. vehicle was parked nearby, but spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva said the victims were not believed to be U.N. personnel.

A spokesman for NATO-led peacekeepers said they were not involved in the case, and U.S. military officials had no comment.

The deaths are sure to add to jitters in Afghanistan's international community following Wednesday's killings of two British men who were working with the United Nations in preparing for September elections. A spokesman for Taliban militants claimed responsibility for those deaths.