Taliban kills 10 Christian charity workers

Taliban kills 10 Christian charity workers

Taliban gunmen have killed 10 members of Christian charity medical team, including six Americans, in northern Afghanistan.

The deadliest attack since in 2001 occurred in Badakhshan province, a scenic mountain redoubt considered a peaceful refuge from the war, Washington Post reported on Sunday.

Afghan and Western officials said the victims were thought to be members of a medical team working with a Christian charity group that has decades of experience in Afghanistan.

That team, from the International Assistance Mission, lost contact with its office in Kabul on Wednesday, two days before the attack, said Dirk Frans, the group’s executive director.

“We’ve got a team that has gone missing, and then there are 10 people found dead. At the moment we’re working on the assumption that this is the same team,” Frans said.

The Taliban quickly asserted responsibility for the killings, saying the medical workers were “foreign spies” and were spreading Christianity. But police officials have not ruled out robbery as a motive, as the victims were stripped of their belongings after they were shot.The team members — six Americans, one German, one Briton and four Afghans — were returning from neighboring Nurestan province, where they had spent several days administering eye care to impoverished villagers. They were traveling unarmed and without security guards, Frans said.

Two of the Afghans were unharmed.The group is registered as a Christian nonprofit organization. Although its members do not shy away from this affiliation in this conservative Muslim country, Frans and others said they do not proselytize.

In their work since 1966 on health and economic development projects, under King Zahir Shah, the Russians, the mujaheddin government and the Taliban, Frans said, “all along we’ve been known as a Christian organization. That has been a nonissue.”

Source: Washington Post