Red Cross makes attempt to get hostages freed

The workers were taken hostage Wednesday.

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The International Committee of the Red Cross has established contact with the armed group that kidnapped four of its workers but no progress has been made, officials said Friday.

Today, meanwhile, a large bomb ripped through a crowded police bus in Kabul, killing many police officers, witnesses and a police officer said.

Witnesses said the bus had been torn apart by the blast and that body parts had been scattered in many directions. A police officer at the scene said the bus had been full when the blast ripped through it. Separately in the south, a remote-control bomb in a market killed four people, including two children, an official said Friday.

The four ICRC employees — a national from Myanmar, one from Macedonia and two from Afghanistan — were seized Wednesday in the central province of Ghazni while trying to secure the release of a German captive.

Statement

“We have established contact with all parties concerned with the aim of resolving this situation as quickly as possibly,” said Graziella Leite, an ICRC spokeswoman in Afghanistan.

Leite said the ICRC was referring to the kidnappers as an “armed group.”

The number of kidnappings — both by Taliban militants and individual criminal networks — has increased in recent months.

Militants had initially released the German, Rudolf Blechschmidt, but then recaptured him along with the four ICRC employees.

The chief of the Sayad Abad district of Wardak province, where the four were taken, said elders had spoken with the kidnappers late Thursday “but didn’t achieve anything.”