KUNDUZ: Gunmen have kidnapped two foreign women aid workers and their three Afghan colleagues in the remote province of Badakhshan in northeast Afghanistan, officials said Wednesday.

"Yesterday evening, five health workers, including two female foreign nationals, were kidnapped in the Yaftal area," the provincial governor's spokesman, Abdul Mahroof Rasikh, told AFP.

Police were on the trail of the kidnappers, he said.

The incident was confirmed by the head of the Badakhshan provincial council, Zabihullah Attiq, who said the group was "snatched at gunpoint by seven armed men".