Taliban insurgents were behind the brief kidnapping of South Korean workers and the attack on a South Korean-operated construction site in Afghanistan in December, an official said Friday, sparking concern about security for Koreans staying in the war-torn nation.
The revelations reinforced speculation that the militant group could also have carried out Tuesday's rocket attack on the base for South Korean aid workers in northern Afghanistan amid reports Taliban insurgents have moved to northern parts of the country in large numbers after U.S. military operations in southern parts last year.
"Afghan intelligence authorities have notified us that it was the Taliban that attacked South Korean companies" in December last year, a senior government official said on condition of anonymity.
On Dec. 13, two South Korean construction workers were taken by four armed men in Afghanistan while traveling to their workplace in a vehicle along with one local driver and two bodyguards. Local police rescued the hostages after a gunfight with the kidnappers.
Five days later, a group of armed assailants attacked a South Korean-operated construction site in northern Afghanistan, killing one Bangladeshi worker and apparently abducting seven others after a gunfight with local police, though no South Koreans were hurt in the attack.
On Tuesday this week, unidentified assailants fired five rounds of rocket-propelled grenades toward the newly built base in Afghanistan for South Korean aid workers and troops in the city of Charika in the northern Afghan province of Parwan.
Three of them landed in an open area on the base and the other two outside the facility, but no one was hurt in the attack. South Korea has since decided to indefinitely postpone a formal opening ceremony for the base set for next week.
A total of 369 South Koreans were on the base at the time of the attack, including 57 civilian aid workers and 35 police officers, who belong to the country's provincial reconstruction team (PRT), as well as 277 troops tasked with protecting the team.
South Korean Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin had visited the base earlier Tuesday, and the attack came after he left the facility. That raised speculation that Kim might have been a target, but defense officials said that such a possibility is unlikely.
The base site came under two similar attacks in the past, one in June last year and the other in January, though none were hurt in the attacks. It is not known who were behind the attacks.
Northern Afghanistan has been considered largely safe, compared with southern strongholds of Taliban insurgents.
But an official said that the government is looking into an intelligence report that Taliban insurgents have moved to northern Afghanistan in large numbers after U.S.-led allied forces carried out intensive operations last year to drive out Taliban insurgents from their southern strongholds.
The South Korean PRT began its mission last year to help rebuild the war-torn nation by strengthening the Parwan provincial government's administrative capabilities and offering medical services as well as vocational and police training.