After six employees of the International Committee of the Red Cross were killed in Afghanistan on Wednesday, the aid organisation announced that it would temporarily suspend efforts in the country and called the offensive the "worst attack against us" in 20 years. Hunt for two Red Cross workers after deadly Afghan ambush

The Red Cross was desperately searching for two employees who went missing after their convoy came under insurgent fire in northern Afghanistan, leaving six other workers dead, the charity said Friday. The head of the ICRC called the incident the "worst attack against us" in 20 years, but the group said it did not know who was responsible. "We will put our operations on hold for at least a week after our colleagues were killed in the attack last night," Thomas Glass, an aid worker and public relations officer with the ICRC, told Al Jazeera. READ MORE: MSF driver killed in attack on convoy in CAR

The governor of Jowzjan province, Lotfullah Azizi, said the aid convoy was attacked by suspected Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) gunmen. The attack comes at a time when Afghanistan is in dire need of humanitarian assistance, with more than 100 people killed in recent avalanches and tens of thousands displaced by the wrenching conflict. “We are actively trying to locate them.”

No militant group has so far claimed responsibility for the killings, but Jowzjan’s police chief Rahmatullah Turkistani has blamed local Islamic State jihadists.
The International Committee of the Red Cross announces it will be temporarily halting some of its operations in Afghanistan after gunmen killed six of its workers yesterday.