Officials from the Chinese construction company whose workers were killed or wounded in a gruesome attack in North Afghanistan last month insist the attack was a terrorist act.

In an exclusive interview with the Xinhua News Agency in Kabul yesterday, two ranking officials from the China Railway Construction Company said that, based upon contacts with Chinese workers, witnesses and officials from related departments of the country, the pre-dawn attack on a Chinese road construction site in Kunduz Province can be well termed a "terrorist attack."

During the attack that took place at 1:30 am local time on June 10, a dozen or so assailants shot on some 100 Chinese workers, with 11 killed in their beds and five others wounded.

In the immediate moments after the cold-blooded attack, two other attacks on a vehicle owned by a German Provincial Reconstruction Team and a local girls school in Kunduz took place, with at least four people killed and many others injured.

Recently, two bomb attacks rocked Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar Province in the eastern part of Afghanistan, and an underground bomb-making workshop was uncovered in Kabul, the capital of the country.

"All these attacks point to a series of well-plotted and well-coordinated terrorist acts," said the officials who refused to be named.

"The attack which occurred at the Chinese construction site is undoubtedly a link of it, and they have certainly achieved their goals."

According to the officials who came to Afghanistan to help resolve related problems concerning the attack and the project, the Chinese company sustained huge economic losses from the surprise attack, and survivors were horrified and the work had to be suspended indefinitely.

"These must have been the assailants' premeditated objectives," they said.

In a response to the attack, Hamid Karzai, president of the Afghan transitional government, called the attackers "enemies" of Afghanistan.

Mohammad Qassim Fahim, then acting president and defence minister, termed this a "terrorist attack" and an "inhuman act."

The Chinese officials from the construction company said they believe that these statements support the notion that this was a terrorist attack.

They also rejected some media reports that this attack was connected with economic competition with bidders from other countries. They categorically said that the company as well as its employees had never started a feud with anyone.

"These reports are groundless," they added.

(Xinhua News Agency July 7, 2004)