Eight foreign medical aid workers shot dead

Eight foreign medical aid workers have been shot dead in the remote forests of north Afghanistan, their charity said on Saturday as the Taliban claimed it killed them for being “Christian missionaries”.

The bullet-riddled bodies of five men, all Americans, and three women, an American, a German and a Briton, were found in the northeastern province of Badakhshan on Friday, said the provincial police chief.

Two Afghans were also killed and two survived. They were part of a 12-member team that included eye doctors, a dentist, a general doctor and nurses, returning from a camp in neighbouring Nuristan province, as informed by the International Assistance Mission (IAM) director Dirk Frans.

Frans said the group had been travelling in a four-wheel-drive vehicle through Badakhshan province, believing it to be safer.

“They were killed on their way back. They had no guns and no security because we come at the communities’ invitation and they take care of us,” Frans said.

“The last call we had was on Wednesday evening; there have never been any threats against us. If there were threats, we would not have gone,” he said, adding that the organisation would continue its activities.

“We have been working under the king, the Communists and the Taliban, and they know what we do,” he said.

Head of Badakhshan provincial police Aqa Noor Kintoz said that the group had been lined up and shot in dense forest, according to the testimony of an Afghan survivor.

“Yesterday at around 8:00 am, one of our patrols confronted a group of foreigners. They were Christian missionaries and we killed them all,” said Zabihullah Mujahed, a spokesman for the Taliban, as they claimed responsibility.

Frans however denied the Taliban’s claim that the group carried Bibles in the local language Dari.

He said that the government and the Nato’s International Security Assistance Force were working to return the bodies, which are yet to be formally identified.

The US embassy said it still could not confirm the number of US fatalities but said it had reports of “several” Americans among them.

International Assistance Mission, whose annual report says its headquarters are in Kabul and has been in the country since 1966, says it provides the majority of eye care available to Afghans, running eye hospitals in Kabul, Herat, Mazar-i-Sharif and Kandahar.

Kintoz said the medics were shot by armed men in a remote area of Badakhshan, according to the testimony of “Saifullah”, an Afghan survivor.

“They were confronted by a group of armed men who lined them up and shot them. Their money and belongings were all stolen,” said Kintoz.

He said that according to Saifullah’s testimony he had escaped death by reading verses of the Koran, prompting the men to realise he was a Muslim and release him in neighbouring Nuristan.

The police chief said local villagers had warned the group not to enter the dangerous forested area, but they had insisted they would be safe because they were doctors, according to Saifullah’s statement.

He said the bodies had been found in Kuran wa Minjan district, an area on the border with Nuristan, one day’s drive from the provincial capital Faizabad.

Northeast Afghanistan has been regarded as largely free of the Taliban-led insurgency troubling other parts of the country.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 8^th, 2010.