Gunmen on motorbikes shot dead Thursday four Pakistanis and an Afghan working for a firm building roads in southern Afghanistan, officials said.
Three men riding on the back of motorbikes opened fire on the group of labourers, killing five and also wounding another Pakistani and an Afghan, the Afghan interior ministry said.
The ambush took place in the Kobi area of Panjwayi district in Kandahar province, a centre for the Taliban-led insurgency fighting to bring down the Western-backed Afghan government and now into a ninth year.
Three "terrorists" riding motorbikes opened fire at a vehicle used by the construction company at 7:30 am "with the result that one Afghan and four Pakistani nationals were killed," the ministry said.
"These men were all civilians and were working for SAITA road construction company," it said.
Local officials said initially that five Pakistanis were killed.
The governor of Panjwayi district, Shah Baran, told AFP the construction workers were ambushed on their way to work.
SAITA employs around 1,000 Pakistanis in Afghanistan, working mainly on road construction projects funded by grants from Japan and Europe, said a company executive, Ajmal Farooqi.
Speaking to AFP, Farooqi confirmed the deaths of four Pakistani labourers.
"They were going to work when this incident took place. We are arranging transportation of their bodies back to Pakistan," he said.
A huge truck bomb exploded in front of SATIA's office in central Kandahar city during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan last August, leaving 40 people dead and at least another 80 injured.
Though the attack bore the hallmarks of the Taliban, the militants did not claim responsibility, possibly because the dead were civilians and did not include any foreigners.
Abdul Satar, acting head of Mirwais hospital in Kandahar city, said five bodies were brought in after Thursday's shooting and one wounded Pakistani.
Kandahar was the spiritual capital of the Taliban, who ruled Afghanistan from 1996 until they were overthrown in the 2001 US-led invasion. Remnants of the movement have regrouped to wage an increasingly deadly insurgency.
Around 121,000 US and NATO soldiers are based in Afghanistan fighting the insurgents, with another 30,000 due to be deployed, mostly to the south, by August as part of a major new strategy designed to end the war.
A massive military campaign is underway in neighbouring Helmand province, aimed at driving out Taliban militants who run some regions in tandem with drug traffickers.
Afghan, US and NATO leaders have made clear that Kandahar is also slated for military clearance operations that are to pave the way for civilian control as part of the new counter-insurgency strategy to reverse the Taliban momentum.
