Missionaries Murdered In Afghanistan

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(Aug. 7) -- Six Americans, a Briton and a German all working for a Christian medical charity in Afghanistan have been ambushed and killed by militants, their group said today.

Two Afghan translators were also killed with the eight foreign aid workers -- three women and five men -- whom they'd been helping. Their bodies were found riddled with bullets next to their abandoned vehicles in a mountainous area of Badakhshan province, the provincial police chief told The New York Times.

The victims were a group of foreign medical personnel who'd been working at an eye care center in remote Nuristan, and were returning to the Afghan capital when they were ambushed, the International Assistance Mission said in a statement on its website. The charity lost contact with the group on Wednesday evening, and a local shepherd later found their bodies and alerted Afghan police, CNN reported.
"We object to this senseless killing of people who have done nothing but serve the poor. Some of the foreigners have worked alongside the Afghan people for decades," the IAM statement said, noting that the charity has worked in Afghanistan since 1966, making it the longest-serving NGO there.

This is one of the largest death tolls for foreign aid workers in Afghanistan in a single incident, and the deadliest episode for American civilians there since a suicide bomber killed seven CIA agents at a base in eastern Afghanistan last year. It also underscores the danger for charity workers there, whom the Taliban often view as collaborators with U.S. and NATO forces, rather than humanitarian non-combatants. Earlier this summer, gunmen and suicide bombers stormed the northern Afghan offices of the U.S.-based DAI charity, killing at least five people.

One of the victims of this week's ambush, a female British doctor identified as 36-year-old Karen Woo, had set up a Facebook page for the fated Nuristan expedition, requesting donations for the charity and posting photos of herself and Afghan children. Another photo shows at least two SUVs on a rocky path in Nuristan surrounded by snow-capped mountains, in a hauntingly idyllic scene not far from where the group was killed.