Published January 13, 2015
A U.N. worker from Myanmar (search) was among three people killed in a homicide attack (search) at an Internet cafe in the Afghan capital, officials said Sunday, the latest in a string of attacks apparently targeting foreigners.
U.N. spokeswoman Ariane Quentier identified one of the victims from Saturday's blast as an employee of the U.N. Office for Project Services (search). She said the man was a Myanmar national, but didn't release his name.
"He was identified this morning and his family has been informed," Quentier said.
Afghan officials said earlier they believed that the only foreign victim in the attack on the Park Net Cafe in Kabul's upscale Shahr-e-Naw district was from the Philippines. But police said Sunday they were mistaken.
Gen. Nazar Mohammed Nekzad, a Ministry of Interior official leading the investigation, said the victim's passport and U.N. identity showed he was a citizen of Myanmar. He had been working on a road project in southern Afghanistan.
A ministry spokesman said one of the three victims appeared to be a suicide bomber, because of the severe mutilation of his body.
The third fatality and five wounded were Afghan customers, spokesman Latfullah Mashal said.
"We suspect it was an attack on an Internet cafe where foreigners go to check their mail," Mashal said. "It might be a terrorist attack, but it's still too early to say."
Police have detained five people including the owner of the cafe for questioning, Mashal said.
The attack adds to tension in the capital already stoked by concern that a criminal group might try to kidnap a foreigner in Kabul.
Aid workers have been warned that the group may seize a foreigner to exchange for several recently arrested men suspected in the monthlong kidnapping of three U.N. workers last year. A group of World Bank employees reportedly evaded a possible abduction attempt on Thursday night.
Police have suggested that the same criminal group was involved in the shooting death of a British development worker on March 7.
Afghanistan has seen several deadly suicide attacks since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. The most recent was an attack by a man laden with hand grenades who killed an American woman and an Afghan girl in a Kabul shopping street last October.
https://www.foxnews.com/story/u-n-worker-killed-in-afghan-cafe-blast