KABUL, Afghanistan — Three foreign catering workers were found shot dead outside the Afghan capital on Thursday after being kidnapped during their morning commute, the Afghan police said.

It was the latest in a yearslong series of such attacks, this time against employees of Sodexo, a global food services company that works for several international organizations in Kabul. The men killed came from India, Malaysia and Macedonia.

According to Hashmat Stanikzai, a spokesman for the Kabul Police Department, gunmen stopped the car in which the three men were being driven to work and forced them to switch to another.

But Nasrat Rahimi, a spokesman for the Afghan interior ministry, said it appeared that the men had gotten into the second car voluntarily and were accompanied by their Afghan driver. The driver returned an hour later and said the three men had been kidnapped.