Kabul, Afghanistan ? Suspected Taliban militants on Wednesday killed five Afghans working on a U.S.-funded project to help end opium farming, and a man claiming to have abducted an Italian aid worker threatened to kill her — part of a surge in anti-Western violence apparently aimed at undermining Afghanistan’s recovery.

Italian Clementina Cantoni was in “critical condition” from injuries she suffered when four armed men dragged her from her car in Kabul, where she works for CARE International, said the purported kidnapper, who called himself Temur Shah.

“During the abduction, her head was injured and because of that she is vomiting and internally bleeding,” Shah said in a telephone interview broadcast on private television station Afghan Tolo. “She has not eaten in three days and her health condition is very critical.”

He threatened to kill Cantoni unless the government met his demands, which included more Islamic boarding schools being built and authorities helping farmers find alternatives to growing opium.

“If our demands are not accepted … we will show our reaction and finish her,” said the man.

Shah gave no proof that Cantoni, 32, was his captive, and the Afghan government did not immediately comment on his demands.

CARE said in a statement it was not at liberty to comment on any aspect of the case out of concern for Cantoni’s safety.

The five Afghans killed Wednesday were ambushed and shot to death as they drove through southern Helmand province, said senior provincial official Ghulam Muhiddin.

They were working on a U.S. government-sponsored project providing alternative livelihoods to farmers growing opium, the raw material for heroin, said Carol Yee, a representative for Washington-based Chemonics International, which is managing the project.

Afghan widows hold a sign and a photograph of Italian relief worker Clementina Cantoni to condemn her kidnapping during a protest at a CARE International food distribution center in Kabul. Cantoni, who managed a CARE International program in Afghanistan to help some 9,500 widows, was abducted in Kabul on Monday evening, the first kidnapping of a foreigner in Afghanistan since three U.N. election workers were seized last October and held for nearly a month.

The United States and other countries are pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into Afghanistan in a crackdown on the drug trade. The nation last year produced nearly 90 percent of the world’s opium, sparking warnings it is fast becoming a “narco-state” less than four years after the end of its role as an al-Qaida haven.

Meanwhile, a former foreign minister for the ousted Taliban regime said he has enrolled as a candidate to run in September elections for the new 249-seat legislature.

Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, considered a relative moderate, surrendered to U.S. forces in 2003. He was detained at a U.S. base before being held under house arrest in Kabul, and freed in April.

“I am an Afghan and I have the right to be an independent candidate,” he said. “I am doing this for the sake of the people of Afghanistan. If I win, I will work for the peace and development of Afghanistan.”

When asked whether he still had any Taliban ties, Muttawakil said: “The Taliban are also Afghans. The public must decide who they want as their leaders, whether it’s the Taliban or someone else.”