FIVE Afghans were killed and a Japanese aid worker wounded yesterday in an attack in Jalalabad city in the eastern province of Nangarhar, officials said.

The attack comes as humanitarian groups remain on high alert just days after an American aid worker for the U.N. was killed in a bombing in Kabul.

Tetsu Nakamura, a doctor who heads Peace Japan Medical Services, known as Peshawar Kai in Japanese, was targeted by gunmen while in a vehicle in Jalalabad.

“Dr. Nakamura was wounded and his three security guards, a driver and another colleague were killed,” Attaullah Khogyani, a spokesman for Nangarhar’s governor, said.

Nakamura is well known in Japan for his aid work, which dates back decades.

The Peshawar Kai website states that Nakamura began aid work in Peshawar in northwest Pakistan in 1984, going on to open a clinic in a remote Nangarhar village in 1991.

The organization in 1998 established a hospital in Peshawar to serve as the group’s permanent base for medical programs in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

On Nov. 24, Anil Raj, an American who worked for the U.N. Development Program in Afghanistan, was killed when his vehicle was targeted in a bombing in Kabul. (SD-Agencies)