Herat, Afghanistan:  Two members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato)-led force in Afghanistan were reported missing yesterday and the Taliban said they were holding the bodies of two drowned foreign soldiers.

The militants' spokesman Qare Yousuf told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location that they had recovered the bodies of the drowned soldiers on Wednesday in the western Badghis province.

The province's police chief, Abdul Jabar, said the two service-members were Americans, who drowned in a river after arriving in the area during a gunbattle on Wednesday.

Earlier, the Nato-led force in Afghanistan said two of its members were reported missing during a routine resupply mission in the west of the country on Wednesday.

"We continue exhaustive search and rescue operations to locate our missing service members. We are doing everything we can to find them," said US Navy Captain Jane Campbell, a press officer for the Nato-led force.

The force did not identify the nationality of the missing service members. Troops from more than 40 nations are members of the nearly 110,000-strong Nato-led force, two-thirds of them American. The biggest contingents operating in the west of the country are from the United States and Italy.

UN criticised

Meanwhile, the Taliban yesterday levelled a stinging verbal attack on the United Nations, which is relocating 600 foreign staff in Afghanistan after the militia attacked one of its guesthouses in Kabul.

In a statement on its website, the Taliban accused the United Nations of ‘suppressing and oppressing' Muslims while supporting ‘arrogant invaders'.

The UN decision to temporarily withdraw 600 foreign staff — more than 50 per cent of the current total — comes in response to a Taliban attack on a hostel nine days ago in which five UN employees and two Afghans were killed.

The Taliban accused the world body of ‘horrendous' crimes in the eight years since the Islamist regime was pushed from power. "They have their share in the mass murders of the Afghan people and are the cause of the tragedies and sufferings of the Afghans."