The head of an American-funded training centre in Afghanistan says he's been forced to close it because the funding has dried up since the US cruise missile attack on the country in August.

The centre in the southern city of Kandahar, once a derelict Russian base, had been teaching trades such as plumbing, carpentry, welding and masonry to young Afghans for the past year.

The US oil company UNOCAL had been funding it in the hope that it could use the workmen it trained to help build a gas pipeline across the country from Turkmenistan to Pakistan.

But the head of the centre Professor Azimi told the BBC that UNOCAL had now withdrawn its money