KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) – Two attacks on Afghan soldiers taking part in a U.N.-sponsored weapons collection program in northern Afghanistan forced the United Nations to suspend travel along two main roads in the area, an official said Sunday.

No one was hurt in the attacks by two Northern Alliance factions, but two Afghan National Army vehicles were damaged, U.N. spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva said.

“The attacks involved elements of the factions that are not pleased by the heavy weapons collection process,” Almeida e Silva said at a news conference.

They occurred between Nov. 21 and Nov. 23 in Jawzjan and Balkh provinces, he said.

The United Nations, which has offices in the Balkh province capital, Mazar-e-Sharif, suspended operations along the road between there and Jawzjan’s capital, Shibirghan.

That suspension was lifted on Sunday, the U.N. spokesman said. But the other, on the road between Mazar-e-Sharif and another Balkh province district, was kept in place because factional fighting also occurred there three weeks ago, Almeida e Silva said.

The Northern Alliance played a key role in the U.S.-led invasion that drove the Taliban out of the Afghan capital, Kabul, two years ago. But its two main factions – consisting of different ethnic groups – often fight each other in several northern provinces.

In the weapons collection program, hundreds of Afghan fighters have surrendered light and heavy arms for cash, food and clothes in an effort to improve security. The $41 million initiative, funded mostly by Japan, aims to decommission 100,000 battle-hardened militiamen in a step toward peace and the creation of a new national army and police force.

Meanwhile, the U.N. refugee agency continued on Sunday to assess its decision to withdraw its staff from Afghanistan’s border regions, effectively suspending its assistance to tens of thousands of refugees from neighboring Pakistan.

The steps were taken after Bettina Goislard, 29, a French woman who worked with the U.N. High Commissioner of Refugees, was gunned down by suspected Taliban militants in the southern city of Ghazni earlier this month.

She became the first international aid worker killed in Afghanistan since the Taliban fell.

The government on Saturday confirmed a report in the Times of London newspaper which quoted Afghan President Hamid Karzai and said Taliban militants had paid the two attackers, one a former driver for the Taliban regime, to kill Goislard, a U.N. worker well known in the region.

AP-ES-11-30-03 0616EST