KABUL, Aug 13 (Reuters) - Insurgents killed three female international aid workers and their local driver in an ambush in Afghanistan on Wednesday, the provincial governor said.
"They were travelling in a car towards Kabul," said Abdullah Wardak, the governor of Logar province south of Kabul where the incident took place.
"Three foreign women employees of IRC (International Rescue Committee) and their local driver were killed in this ambush by the opposition forces," he said. "I do not know the identity of the foreigners."
Bodies of the victims have been retrieved, Wardak said, adding the assailants had carried out the attack from a car.
The attack was the single bloodiest involving foreign aid workers in recent years in Afghanistan, where violence has sharply jumped since 2006 when the ousted Taliban relaunched their insurgency.
Rising violence has forced aid agencies to restrict their humanitarian and development work at a time when drought and high prices are putting more people under pressure, a group of 100 non-governmental organisations in Afghanistan said this month.
Many schools and clinics have closed and significant numbers of people have become internally displaced. Aid agencies have been attacked and 19 Afghan NGO staff killed this year.
Violence in Afghanistan has reached its worst level since 2006, the bloodiest period since U.S.-led and Afghan forces overthrew the Taliban in 2001. There were more violent incident in each of the last three months than in any month since 2001, aid agencies say.
The rise in violence comes despite the presence of more than 61,000 foreign troops and over 140,000 Afghan forces.
No group has claimed responsibility for Wednesday's ambush. (Reporting by Sayed Salahuddin; Editing by Jerry Norton)
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