Kabul - More than 500 Afghan police and villagers in eastern Afghanistan resumed the search on Wednesday morning for a kidnapped Japanese aid worker, who was abducted by four armed men the previous day, police said.

Kazuya Ito, 31, an employee of Peshawar-Kai, a Japanese aid group, along with his Afghan driver was kidnapped in Khewa district of eastern Nangahar province on Tuesday morning as he was on his way to inspect an ongoing irrigation project in the area.

The driver was released hours later and confirmed Ito was alive. Hundreds of police and villagers started to search for him in the mountains between Nangarhar and neighbouring Kunar province, but ended their search at nightfall.

Kabul  - A United Nations investigative team has found that 90 civilians, including 60 children, were killed in a US-led coalition air raid in western Afghanistan last week, the top UN envoy in the country said Tuesday.

The team "found convincing evidence, based on the testimony of eyewitnesses and others that some 90 civilians were killed," Kai Eide, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's special representative for Afghanistan, said in a statement.

Eide said the victims were 60 children, 15 women and 15 men while 15 other villagers were wounded in Friday's airstrike in Azizabad village in the Shindand district of Herat province.

Kabul- A Japanese aid worker along with his Afghan driver were kidnapped in Afghanistan's eastern province of Nangarhar on Tuesday morning, police said.

"The two men's vehicle was stopped by a group of unknown gunmen in Badyalai village in Khewa district," a police official who did not want to be named, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

"The Japanese aid worker and his driver were dragged out of their vehicle and were taken to an unknown location," the source said.

Kabul  - The Afghan cabinet has demanded the presence of the international community "must be reviewed" while the government should also regulate the authority and responsibilities of the foreign forces in the country, a presidential statement said Monday.

The move by the Afghan ministers came three days after some 90 civilians, including women but mostly children, were killed in a US- led coalition air raid in western Herat Province.

Kabul - Hundreds of villagers in western Afghanistan demonstrated Saturday to protest the apparent death of scores of civilians in a US airstrike in Herat Province.