A French aid worker was kidnapped at gunpoint yesterday in the latest of a string of attacks on foreign citizens in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul.

Dany Egreteau, 32, a Frenchman working for the Paris-based human rights group Solidarité Laïque, was on his way to a meeting at the Education Ministry when he was ambushed.

Mr Egreteau, an education specialist, had arrived in Afghanistan only a week ago. An Afghan intelligence officer who tried to prevent the abduction was reportedly shot dead.

“At around 9am armed people stopped the car of the foreigners who work for our Education Ministry,” Zmarai Bashiry, an Interior Ministry official, told The Times. “One foreigner managed to run away.”

Mr Egreteau had been travelling in the vehicle of another French charity Afrane, and had tried to run away after it was stopped by gunmen, said Etienne Gille, Afrane’s president. “Threatened by armed men, Dany Egreteau tried to escape on foot,” Mr Gille said.

An internal security assessment distributed later by the UN reported that two vehicles boxed in the marked international NGO vehicle as Mr Egreteau was seized. Colleagues said that he was based in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and is an education specialist.

A woman aid worker and the driver of the vehicle are reported to have escaped after a local man, who worked for the Afghan intelligence service, tried to intervene and was killed.

“My nephew tried to stop them abducting the foreigners,” Ghulam Hazrat, 50, said at the scene. “He grabbed the gun of one of the kidnappers. The other shot him dead with five bullets. At this time one of the foreigners ran away and they put the other in the car, kicking him badly.”

Another witness said that he had seen two foreign men running down a street and being followed by two armed men, with a third in a car behind them. One had tripped and was grabbed by the kidnappers, said Hajatullah, 28, who lives in the area.

“A man stopped his car and tried to take the gun from one of the abductors. The second abductor opened fire and killed the man trying to help. The two forced the foreigner into the waiting car and disappeared,” he said.

There are hundreds of international aid organisations in Afghanistan trying to help the country to recover from three decades of war.

The abduction was the latest in a series of security incidents involving foreign citizens in Kabul that have stoked an atmosphere of mounting alarm among an expatriate community of several thousand.

On October 20 Gayle Williams, a British aid worker, was shot dead by Taleban militants who accused her of Christian missionary work. Five days later two employees of DHL, the freight company, one a British national, were killed by a bodyguard employed to protect them.

It is believed that the latter attack was not connected to militant activity. Zabiullah Mujahed, a Taleban representative, told The Times that the organisation was not involved in yesterday’s abduction either.

Privately, Western officials suggest that a criminal motive is more likely. There has been a wave of criminal abductions of Afghans in Kabul in recent months, many of them prominent businessmen or their relatives. They are often ransomed for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In an incident last month, police were able to rescue a cousin of the late King of Afghanistan and the son of a prominent bank director. They were reportedly freed from a cell built into the side of a well.

The police reported the arrest of six members of a kidnap gang in Kabul at the weekend. Some Western diplomats suggested this might be linked to yesterday’s abduction.

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