Aid workers in Afghanistan say rebels are increasingly targeting them in an effort to undermine the U.S.-backed government and undermine post-war reconstruction. In the last month alone, seven Afghan mine-clearers have been shot and one killed in four separate ambushes in the south of the country. In March, an International Red Cross water engineer from El Salvador was murdered in southern Kandahar province. And in April, assailants threw grenades at a U.N. children\'s agency compound in the east. The United Nations has responded by suspending travel on some roads and restricting U.N. vehicle movements to daylight hours. On Thursday, they announced staff would only travel in six of the most volatile southern provinces if they were given armed escorts by the government. \"There\'s clearly a sense that it\'s getting much more risky,\" said Paul Barker, country director for the U.S. aid group, CARE. Many aid agencies in the south are moving around in beat-up, unmarked cars or taxis and some foreigners working in the region are donning traditional Afghan dress. Barker said CARE had been taking such measures for years. \"Now we\'re just trying to lower our profile yet more and blend in as much as possible. We\'re restricting expatriate travel much more than we used to,\" The United States says it has been shifting its own focus from combat to reconstruction operations with so-called \"Provincial Reconstruction Teams, or PRTs, each comprised of 60-100 soldiers. American officials say the idea is to increase aid and security simultaneously, but aid workers say PRTs are having the opposite effect. \"What they are doing is creating confusion in the minds of the people and actually increasing our insecurity,\" Robillard said. \"What you have is people in and out of uniform distributing aid, but the ones in uniform are also engaged in hunting al-Qaida and Taliban and killing them. Not everyone makes the distinction.\" (AP)