Officials say armed men have kidnapped more than 30 elders in a remote part of eastern Afghanistan.
A spokesperson in Nangarhar province, Ahmad Zia Abdulzai, said today that officials are working to negotiate the release of the victims, who were taken three days earlier.
He added that around 15 people already have been freed and that the kidnappers have demanded that any elders' relatives working for the Afghan police quit their posts.
Abdulzai who said elders from the districts of Goshta and Lalpur were among those taken - did not provide further details on where or how the kidnappings were carried out.
No one has claimed responsibility for the kidnappings. Several armed groups operate in the area where the elders were taken.
A militant car bomb prematurely exploded overnight in eastern Afghanistan, killing nine insurgents and four civilians, authorities said today.
The blast happened in Logar province, some 10 kilometers (six miles) north of the capital, Pul-e-Alam, said Din Mohammad Darwesh, a spokesman for the provincial governor.
Darwesh said it appeared insurgents, who he identified as three Afghans and six Pakistanis, set off the bomb too early. "Unfortunately, the explosion completely destroyed a nearby civilian house in which two women and two children were killed," he said in a telephone interview. "Police and local residents retrieved the bodies."
Two days earlier, additional Afghan soldiers deployed to the capital after receiving an intelligence report about a possible attack.
Meanwhile today, a lone suicide bomber entered a police station in southern Kandahar province, though officers' fire forced him to detonate his explosive vest early, only wounding one civilian, said Zia Durrani, spokesperson for Kandahar's police chief.
