August 14, 2008
3 Western Aid Workers and an Afghan Driver Killed in Attack
By CARLOTTA GALL
KABUL, Afghanistan -- Three Western women and an Afghan driver, all working for an American aid group, were killed just south of Kabul on Wednesday by men with automatic weapons, local officials and the aid group said. The Taliban took responsibility, asserting that the workers were not helping Afghanistan.
Officials said a second Afghan driver was critically wounded in the attack, which took place in Logar Province.
The provincial governor, Abdullah Wardak, said the aid workers "were killed as they came under fire from unknown gunmen." A local doctor, who said he had witnessed the attack, said a group of 10 to 12 Taliban militants opened fire on the cars from the roadside, killing them instantly.
The victims were employed by the International Rescue Committee, a relief organization based in New York that has been assisting Afghan refugees since the mid-1980s. The women were Trinidadian-American, Canadian and British-Canadian, the group said in a statement posted on its Web site. The group has suspended aid programs in Afghanistan indefinitely, it added.
A surge of violence and insurgent attacks has made 2008 the most dangerous year for Afghan civilians, aid workers and American and NATO military forces since the United States intervention that toppled the Taliban government in 2001. Aid workers in particular have been affected.
A Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahed, who claimed that his group carried out the attack on the International Rescue Committee workers, justified it in a statement by telephone, saying: "We don't value their aid projects, and we don't think they are working for the progress of our country."
Aid organizations and their staff members have been subject to increasing attacks and intimidation, by both insurgent and criminal groups this year, the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief, an organization representing 100 aid organizations working in Afghanistan, warned last week. Nineteen workers from aid groups were killed this year up to the beginning of August, more than the whole number killed in 2007, it said in a statement.
"This situation has forced many aid agencies to restrict the scale and scope of their development and humanitarian operations," it said. "Increasing and spreading insecurity is jeopardizing the delivery of essential humanitarian assistance."
The International Rescue Committee workers were driving midmorning toward Kabul, past a village called Qala-e-Rahamat about 30 miles south of the capital, when gunmen opened fire on the cars, the governor said. The gunmen then approached the vehicles and shot the aid workers again, the governor said.
He said the gunmen had been following the vehicles in a white Toyota car. The aid workers were driving in a clearly marked International Rescue Committee vehicle, the aid group said in its statement.
The doctor who said he had witnessed the attack gave a different account. He said he saw a group of 10 to 12 Taliban fighters, armed with rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns, hiding behind a garden wall. They emerged and opened fire on the cars from the side of the road, he said.
"They were shooting while the cars were moving," he said.
"They were Afghan Taliban," he continued, adding that they appeared to be local men, from Logar Province.
When the shooting started, he and other villagers fled the scene, running to hide in the village. When he returned 15 minutes later the women and driver were dead inside their vehicle, he said.
Another doctor traveling along the road came across the vehicles minutes after the shooting and said the aid workers' vehicle was riddled with bullets in the windshield and side. The women inside looked like they were sleeping, he said. "One was leaning her head against the side," he said.
The bodies and the wounded driver were taken to the provincial hospital in the town of Pul-e-Alam, he said. Both doctors spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals from the Taliban.
Abdul Waheed Wafa and Sangar Rahimi contributed reporting.