Unable to protect its staff from Afghanistan\'s cascade of violence, the U.N. refugee agency on Tuesday pulled international workers out of the volatile south and east and suspended all aid to refugees returning from Pakistan. The decision, taken after the weekend slaying of a 29-year-old French refugee worker, could affect tens of thousands of Afghans. A group of international aid organizations also said Tuesday it was considering a pullout from the south, raising fears the desperately poor region could become even more isolated. \"We are taking today a painful decision to temporarily reduce staff in the eastern and southern provinces,\" said Filippo Grandi, the chief of mission in Afghanistan at the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Some 30 foreign staff members were being withdrawn, and refugee centers in the provinces of Nangarhar, Paktia, Khost and Kandahar were being closed, he said. The agency said Monday that it had withdrawn its surviving international staffer out of Ghazni, where Bettina Goislard was gunned down as she traveled Sunday through a bazaar in a clearly marked U.N. vehicle. That same day, a remote-controlled bomb went off beside a U.N. vehicle in Paktia province. And on Nov. 11, a car bomb exploded outside U.N. offices in Kandahar, wounding two people. Maki Shinohara, the UNHCR spokeswoman, said that to minimize the effects of the pullout, a limited number of Afghans will keep the agency\'s offices open, and it will work with other aid organizations to try to keep support flowing. \"Operations will be scaled down, inevitably. The biggest impact will be on refugees returning from Pakistan because we can\'t operate the reception centers,\" Shinohara said. Some 2.5 million Afghan refugees have returned to the country, in addition to 500,000 internally displaced people, since the fall of the Taliban regime in late 2001, mostly from Pakistan and Iran. UNHCR said the few remaining Afghan staff would help keep aid flowing to more than 220,000 Afghan returnees affected by the decision. (AP)