Taliban fighters abducted four Albanians on Saturday in southern Afghanistan, a spokesman for the Islamic movement said.

The four people whose identities were not immediately clear, were kidnapped at gun point in Maiwand district in the southern province of Kandahar, spokesman Qari Mohammad Yousuf said.

"The four Albanians were travelling in two vehicles when our Mujahideen kidnapped them," Yousuf said by satellite phone from an undisclosed location.

Government officials in Kandahar and in Kabul said they had not heard about the report.

Yousuf said the fate of the four will be decided by the Taliban's fugitive supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.

Taliban guerrillas have been fighting against foreign forces, the US-backed government of President Hamid Karzai and anyone supporting it since US-led forces overthrew the Taliban in late 2001.

In the past, fighters have killed several foreigners, including a British national involved in road projects, after kidnapping them.

Nearly 70 foreign troops, most of them Americans, have been killed in the Taliban-inspired resistance in the past year in Afghanistan, the bloodiest period since the Taliban were ousted.

PHOTO CAPTION

Afghan children play on swings hung from an electricity pylon on the outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan March 11, 2006. (REUTERS)