KANDAHAR, September 28 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Suspected Taliban fighters ambushed and killed seven bodyguards of Shir Mohammad, the governor of Helmand province in southern Afghanistan, his spokesman confirmed Sunday, September 28.

"Seven bodyguards of the governor were killed yesterday (Saturday) night in an ambush by Taliban," said Haji Ahmad Wali.

The bodyguards were ambushed by gunmen in two cars while traveling from the provincial capital Lashkargah to Sangin 490 kilometers (310 miles) southwest of Kabul.

Governor Mohammad was not with the guards, who were traveling home, Wali told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

One of the attackers' cars was later found broken down and abandoned in Sangin district by government forces hunting for the gunmen.

In another development, the U.N. condemned Sunday the "vicious" killings of two Afghan aid workers in violence-wracked southern Afghanistan last week.

"These crimes can have no justification," said David Singh, spokesman for the U.N. Assistance Mission to Afghanistan (UNAMA).

"In fact, UNAMA reiterates that under international law, attacks knowingly and intentionally directed against personnel involved in humanitarian assistance constitute war crimes," he told reporters.

"UNAMA condemns in the strongest possible terms the vicious and deliberate killing on 24th September of two Afghans working for the Voluntary Association for the Rehabilitation of Afghanistan (VARA)."

Armed men in a taxi shot at a vehicle belonging to the Afghan non-governmental organization VARA on Wednesday near Gereshk in Helmand.

An engineer was killed instantly and the driver died Thursday in hospital in the main southern city of Kandahar.

VARA was working with the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR to provide water and shelter for returning refugees in remote communities in southern Afghanistan.

UNHCR spokeswoman Maki Shinohara said two suspects had been arrested.

"We certainly do hope that the perpetrators will be put to justice very quickly and security arrangements improved so that we could resume fully our operation for assisting Afghans," she said.

Road missions by humanitarian organizations have been temporarily suspended in the area following the attack.

"These recent killings once more confirm the critical necessity for all parties concerned to establish security throughout the country," Singh said.

Afghanistan's government, the United Nations and aid agencies have repeatedly called for Kabul-based peacekeeping troops to be deployed in the provinces where security remains a major problem amid an upsurge in violence in the south and east blamed on Taliban operatives.

Outgoing NATO chief George Robertson said on brief visit to Kabul Friday that the alliance was examining options to expand the International Security Assistance Force, now under NATO command, to the provinces, with a decision expected in a few weeks.

Attacks on aid workers have spiraled in the past 12 months from one a month to one every two days, according to the CARE relief agency.

On September 8, four Afghan employees of a Danish charity were pulled from their car and shot dead in Ghazni province by gunmen.

The bloodshed has forced the suspension of aid projects across vast swathes of Afghanistan's south and east, undermining the war-shattered country's prospects of recovery and destabilizing U.S.-installed government of Hamid Karzai.