A female worker from a Christian aid group was shot dead on the street in Kabul this morning by Taleban militants. A spokesman for the Taleban accused her of spreading Christianity amongst Afghans.

The aid worker, a South African national working for the Christian charity SERVE, was killed at 8am as she walked to work in the west of Kabul by two armed men on a motorcycle.

"Our people carried out this attack in District 3 of Kabul this morning at 7am," the Taliban's spokesman Zabiullah Mujahed told The Times. "The reason that we killed her was because she was spreading Christianity."

It was the first killing of a Western aid worker in Kabul. A spokesman for the Afghan Interior Ministry confirmed the killing but was able to offer few details.

"Two armed men sitting on a motorbike shot her dead. Some bullets hit her body and some hit her leg and when police got there she was dead," Zmarai Bashary said.

A witness to the attack said he had seen the woman walk along the same route to work in the western Karte-Char suburb for about two years.

A labourer working close to the scene of the attack said he heard seven shots. When he reached the scene he saw a woman lying on a footpath.

Western aid agencies have expressed mounting unease at the spreading insecurity in the country in recent months.

There have been 146 security incidents involving non-governmental organisations working in Afghanistan so far this year, compared to 135 for the whole of last year, according to the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office which monitors NGO security.

Twenty-eight aid workers have been killed, among them five internationals, so far this year. There have also been 72 abductions of aid workers.

Three female aid workers from the International Rescue Committee, one of them British, were killed by Taleban militants in an ambush on a road south of Kabul in August.

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