Two Britons working for a security company have been killed in an attack while helping the UN prepare for landmark elections in Afghanistan.
Senior Afghan officials said the two and their Afghan driver were killed when they came under attack in Nuristan, a remote eastern province where the Taliban are still in evidence.
They were employees of Global Risk Strategies, a London-based security firm, said Farooq Wardak, the Afghan government's top election official.
"Both of the individuals involved were British nationals, working alongside the United Nations," the company said in a statement. It didn't release their names.
The deaths were the first among Afghan and foreign staff preparing the country's first post-Taliban election, slated for September.
Details of the attack were unclear. But the US military has warned repeatedly that Taliban-led militants were trying to derail the process in the region, about 100 miles east of the capital, Kabul and near the Pakistan border.
Global Risks is surveying parts of rural Afghanistan as part of UN plans to register voters for September elections.
The Britons "had already visited two districts and it was the third district that they wanted to survey," Hilal said.
Farooq Wardak, the Afghan government's top election official, said the deaths would have "very serious consequences," by possibly deterring UN international monitors.
"The election wouldn't have that much international credibility" in their absence, Wardak said.