A Western team of Christian medical volunteers that provided eye care to poor villagers in remote northeast Afghanistan was lined up, stripped, and shot to death by the Taliban. Monsters. Evil monsters. Via the Christian Science Monitor: The execution-style killings of 10 people working for a Christian medical team in a remote region of northern Afghanistan fit into Taliban insurgents’ stated shift in tactics: Target Western civilians, especially Christians, as “foreign invaders.” The Taliban took credit for one of the deadliest attacks yet on aid workers in Afghanistan, saying the Christian charity workers were proselytizing to poor villagers – a charge that the International Assistance Mission, which dispatched the team, denies. The bodies of six Americans, a Briton, a German, and two Afghan interpreters were discovered Friday in a forested part of Badakhshan Province in remote northern Afghanistan – until now considered a relatively peaceful region known mostly to adventure travelers. The only person in the party not killed was a local translator who offered proof he was a Muslim by quoting the Koran, according to the Associated Press. The attack represents the largest single toll of American civilian deaths in Afghanistan since December, when a suicide bomber killed seven members of a CIA team. It also points to the operational viability of Taliban insurgents’ stated intent to target foreign aid workers as combatants. Via BBC, the Taliban spokesman crowed: “They were Christian missionaries and we killed them all.” Via the NYT, more on the murder victims, including the six American doctors: Tom Little raised three daughters with his wife in Afghanistan, avoided kidnappings during the Russian occupation, hid in his basement for months during the Taliban rule in the 1990s, survived rocket attacks and endured arrests for one reason, friends and family members said: to provide eye care for indigent Afghans. After four decades in the country he came to call home, Mr. Little, a 61-year-old optometrist originally from upstate New York, was returning from treating people in a remote valley in Nuristan Province when he was among the 10 aid workers ambushed in the woods and killed. Another was Dr. Karen Woo, a 36-year-old surgeon from Hertfordshire, England, who specialized in women’s health. She had blogged about being a tomboy who loved “sexy dresses and high heels,” as well as her passion to help Afghan people. And even more on Dr. Little’s mission: Tom Little never sugar-coated the outreach work he and wife, Libby, did in Afghanistan. When he spoke to friends from the Capital Region churches who supported the efforts of the NOOR Eye Project, he talked about how his three daughters grew up being able to tell the difference between incoming and outgoing missiles by listening from the basement of their Kabul home. And he talked about once having the doors of an eye clinic he supervised locked by government officials. He had to creep into the clinic at night to retrieve some of the expensive medical equipment, placing it at a new site so he could continue to provide desperately needed care, just as he had done for more than 30 years. Little, a 61-year-old optometrist who maintains a residence in Delmar with his wife, Libby, and was originally from the Kinderhook area, was one of 10 members of the Christian-sponsored medical team murdered in Afghanistan last week. The Taliban has taken responsibility for their deaths, alleging the volunteers were spying and trying to convert Muslims to Christianity. Support the International Assistance Mission here. *** Must-read backgrounder from Bill Roggio at Long War Journal. They let one man go because he recited verses from the Qur'an. "Taliban Kill 10 on Medical Aid Mission in Afghanistan," by Rod Nordland and Sharifullah Sahak in the New York Times, August 7 (thanks to Twostellas): The International Assistance Mission, a group that last month had a fund-raiser in Kabul for a medical expedition to Nuristan Province, said six of the dead were Americans, one was German and one was British. Dirk Frans, the executive director of the I.A.M., said the team was headed by Tom Little, an American opthamologist with four decades experience in Afghanistan and a fluent Dari speaker. Mr. Frans said the team numbered 12, including four Afghans, two of whom were killed. The victims' bodies were stripped of all belongings, making identification difficult and suggesting robbery as a motive. However, Taliban insurgents are known to be active in the area, and the attackers allowed at least one Afghan to leave the scene unharmed. The survivor, an Afghan driver named Saifullah, told police he was let go because he recited verses from the Koran. A spokesman for the Taliban, Zabiullah Mujahid, claimed that the medical team were shot because they ignored an order from the insurgents to stop. Afterwards, he said, they found evidence that the group were American spies and were preaching Christianity. He said they had maps showing their bases, and a Bible in Dari. Although I.A.M. is a Christian-supported group, Mr. Frans said, it does not engage in proselytizing.... Afterwards, Mr. Kentoz said local residents told police, a group of red-bearded gunmen took the group prisoner and marched them on foot to a remote area where they shot them to death. It is common in Afghanistan for older men to dye their beards with henna.... In imitation of Muhammad. New Jihad Joe Action Figure: shoots doctors, cuts nurses’ throats, and blows up hospitals Afghan Medical Mission Ends In Death For 10 reports, This reminds us of the Mount Scopus Massacre in which Arabs attacked a convoy of unarmed medical workers. It is telling that it takes more than 20 years of education (including internships and residencies) to create a medical doctor, and 16 years of education to make a nurse, and a couple of seconds for a primitive savage with a Koran in one hand and a gun in the other to destroy this asset to the human race. It is telling that Tom Little, the optometrist who volunteered years of his life to helping Afghan children, was a Christian while the savages who murdered him did so under color of Islam. Jews turn deserts into gardens and build mechanized prosthesis to help paraplegics get out of wheelchairs. Christians build skyscrapers, airplanes, schools, and hospitals. Militant “Muslims” turn gardens into deserts, cut limbs off healthy people to put them into wheelchairs, crash airplanes into skyscrapers, and plant bombs in schools and hospitals. The Taliban’s murder of ten unarmed medical workers who, in exchange for little if any pay, were in Afghanistan to help genuine Muslims underscores its status as a collection of nithings or hostis humani generis: subhuman enemies of Civilization and the human race as a whole, and worthy of nothing but extermination as such by the most expedient method.KABUL, Afghanistan -- At least 10 medical personnel, including six Americans, were murdered in northern Afghanistan on Thursday, officials confirmed Saturday. A Taliban spokesman, reached by cellphone, claimed responsibility for the killings. [...]
by Bill LevinsonTen members of the Christian medical team – six Americans, two Afghans, one German and a Briton – were gunned down in a gruesome slaughter that the Taliban said they carried out, alleging the volunteers were spying and trying to convert Muslims to Christianity. The gunmen spared an Afghan driver, who recited verses from the Islamic holy book Quran as he begged for his life.
Sunday, 8 August 2010
Taliban executes Christian medical team in Afghanistan; 6 American doctors among those murdered
Taliban murder 10 medical workers in Afghanistan
August 7, 2010 http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/08/taliban-murder-10-medical-workers-in-afghanistan.html
The New Mount Scopus Massacre: Jihadists Butcher Medical Workers in Afghanistan
August 7, 2010 http://www.israpundit.com/archives/25951
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