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Foreign affairs officials confirmed yesterday that the body of a woman found in Afghanistan – suspected murdered – is a Filipina.

The embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, which has jurisdiction over Afghanistan, said in a report to the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) that the overseas Filipino worker’s body had been found in Gardez, a day after her husband, who is also a Filipino, reported her missing.

Consul General Maria Agnes Cervantes of the embassy in Pakistan said in the report that the husband said his last contact with his wife was at around 11 a.m. just before she was supposed to board the car that would take her from Gardez to Kabul, one and a half hours away.

But the husband said she failed to arrive in the Afghan capital to meet him last Monday.

According to Cervantes, the woman’s driver is now in police custody.

Afghan police and intelligence agents earlier said the body of a foreign woman believed to be a Filipina had been found in a well in Gardez, about 100 kilometers southeast of capital Kabul, four days after she went missing.

The woman, said to have been working for a foreign company, disappeared while she was travelling to the capital, Paktia province’s police chief earlier said.

Police could not say if the suspected murder was linked to the Taliban insurgency, in which militants have kidnapped and beheaded several foreigners.

The Taliban movement normally announces when it has taken foreign hostages.

Insurgency-linked violence has increased in Paktia in the past week. In Gardez, the provincial capital, a Taliban suicide attack killed 10 Afghans on Sunday.                   – With Renee Puno, AFP