Eight foreign medical workers and two Afghans shot by unidentified gunmen were likely killed in an "opportunistic ambush," the international Christian aid organization for which they worked said on Thursday.
The International Assistance Mission (IAM) has disputed the Taliban's claim of responsibility for the killings in Badakhshan province in Afghanistan's remote northeast last week.
The Taliban quickly said it had killed the foreigners -- six Americans, a Briton and a German -- accusing them of promoting Christianity. Another militant Islamist group, Hezb-i-Islami, also said it had killed them.
There has been no independent verification of the claims. A Federal Bureau of Investigation team from the United States and Afghan officials are investigating.
IAM, which has worked in Afghanistan since 1966 and resolutely rejects the accusation its team was proselytizing, said it had also conducted its own investigation but was not in a position to determine who had committed the killings.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has squarely blamed the Taliban and described the killings as "a despicable act of wanton violence."
IAM said its investigation showed the killings were not the result of a robbery, as had been suggested in some media reports.
"We are now working on the assumption that the attack was an opportunistic ambush by a group of non-local fighters," IAM executive director Dirk Frans said in a statement.
All but one member of the team, an Afghan man named Safiullah, was killed. Safiullah, a driver, was held by Afghan authorities but had been released, Frans said.
The remote, impoverished area where mobile eye-care team was attacked is near the border with Nuristan province and is a melting pot of different people, many who only converted to Islam two centuries ago and who speak a myriad of languages and dialects.
"Someone from Kabul going there would be like Columbus discovering America," one veteran Afghan commentator said.
U.S. forces withdrew from Nuristan last year after taking heavy losses in years of battle near its Pakistan border.
Frans said the team was ambushed just after it had crossed a river swollen by recent rains.
"It was then that a group of armed men attacked the team, killing all but one of its members on the spot.
The bodies of four of the Americans were flown back to the United States on Wednesday. The other two will be buried in Afghanistan.
The body of British surgeon Dr Karen Woo will also be buried in a Kabul cemetery later on Thursday.
Violence across Afghanistan has reached its worst level since the Taliban were ousted in late 2001, spreading out of traditional insurgent areas in the south and east into the north and west despite the presence of some 150,000 foreign troops.
Military deaths have hit records this year but it is Afghan civilians who continue to bear the brunt of the conflict. A U.N. report released this week said civilian casualties had risen 31 percent in the first six months of this year.
© 2010 Reuters. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters.
|
