The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) confirmed on Thursday that four of its staff members, including two expatriates, had been kidnapped by an opposition group in Afghanistan.

"We confirm that four ICRC staff members were seized by an armed opposition group on their way back to the delegation in Kabul in the district of Wardak, southwest of Kabul," ICRC spokeswoman Carla Haddad said in Geneva.

Haddad did not mention the name of the opposition group, but she was obviously referring to the Taliban forces.

Local police in Afghanistan had said that Taliban opposition abducted two international and two Afghan ICRC employees on Wednesday and a search had been launched for the missing group.

A spokesman for the Taliban forces had also confirmed that they were the kidnappers, according to media reports.

Haddad said the four hostages include two expatriates from Myanmar and Macedonia respectively. The other two were Afghan national employees.

The four were being held in an "undisclosed location" and the ICRC was in contact with "all parties concerned with the aim to resolve the current situation as swiftly as possible," she said.

(Xinhua News Agency September 28, 2007)