Kabul: British Man Shot Dead by DHL Security Guard was Dad from Newcastle

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David Giles, 42, from Newcastle, was shot dead on Saturday with South African Jason Bresler, a colleague with courier company DHL.

The pair were killed by a security guard, who then shot himself, outside the firm's Afghan headquarters.

His ex-wife Julie Wilson, 37, from Hull, said their son James, 10, was still in shock.

Of Mr Giles, Mrs Wilson said: "He was very outgoing - a really popular lad, really good fun.

"He would not hurt anyone; in fact he would befriend everybody and anybody.

"When I heard about it I just could not believe it. You just don't expect this to happen to someone you loved."

Mrs Wilson met former bus driver Mr Giles when they both lived in Bahrain in the 1990s. They split after a seven-year marriage in 2004.

Football fan

A keen Newcastle United supporter, Mr Giles moved back to Bahrain because job prospects were better there, Mrs Wilson said.

He was still living in the country, where his mother and two sisters are also resident, the Foreign Office has said.

Mr Giles had worked for a time in Iraq but Mrs Wilson said he had laughed off security concerns, telling her: "I'm all right, it's only DHL.

"At the end of the day I only work for a delivery company."

A private guard working for the international shipping company DHL opened fire and killed the company's country director and his deputy before turning the gun on himself, officials said.

The shootings took place in front of the DHL office in central Kabul. One Briton, named by the Foreign Office as David Giles, and one South African were killed in the attack.

A preliminary investigation found that one of the Afghan security guards protecting the DHL compound opened fire on the car carrying the two victims when it pulled into the company headquarters, said Mirza Mohammad Yarmal, the Interior Ministry official in charge of criminal investigations.

The guard then put the barrel of his Kalishnikov rifle to his head and killed himself, Mr Yarmal said.

Blood was splattered over the vehicle's windscreen and pooled on the ground in front of DHL headquarters.

Mr Yarmal said the guard had been hired only about a month ago from an area north of Kabul where Pashtuns - the ethnic group the Taliban draws its fighters from - live. But he said police had no conclusive evidence linking the guard to the insurgent militia.

A Taliban spokesman denied that the militia was involved in the attack.