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Unidentified attackers shot rockets at the construction site of the base of South Korea’s provincial reconstruction team (PRT) in Afghanistan, the Foreign Ministry announced Thursday. The ministry also confirmed that there were no casualties.

Wednesday night’s attack arrived a day before South Korea’s provincial reconstruction team (PRT) was to launch its mission to rebuild the war-torn nation, sounding an alarm bell for the security of the civilian aid workers in the nation where two South Korean religious activists were killed by Al-Qaeda in 2007. Analysts say the attack seemed to be a warning message to South Korea about their decision to redeploy troops to Afghanistan.

Two rockets were fired toward the construction site in Charikar, the capital of the northern Afghan province of Parwan, around 10:10 p.m. Security guards protecting the base fired back two rockets, ministry officials said, a revision of an earlier account that assailants fired a total of four rockets, with one of them landing on the base.

Officials said that one of the two rockets fired by attackers landed about 200-300 meters away from the base, but it was unclear whether the other landed on the base. Fifty-eight South Korean construction workers and some 60 local security guards were at the site at that time, but no casualties or property damage was reported, officials said. Construction of the base is now about 30 percent complete, they said.

The party responsible for launching the attack remains unknown. Foreign Ministery spokesman Kim Young-sun said the Taliban or insurgents in that region may have carried out the attack.

South Korea’s PRT planned to officially launch its mission Thursday with 49 civilian workers and eight troops to protect them. It will be expanded in stages later this year to about 100 reconstruction workers and 40 troops.

The South Korean team plans to help strengthen the Parwan provincial government’s administrative capabilities and offer medical services in addition to vocational and police training as part of efforts to get help the nation regain the ability to stand on its own.

A South Korean Army contingent will protect the civilian workers. An advanced team of about 90 members of the PRT has already been stationed there since mid-June. About 240 more PRT workers were scheduled to head to Afghanistan early this month and in late August.

South Korea had stationed troops in Afghanistan for five years before withdrawing them in late 2007. The pullout, though previously planned, came after the Taliban demanded their withdrawal during a hostage crisis in which insurgents killed two South Korean missionaries.

Source: The Hankyoreh and Yonhap News Agency