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| Medecins Sans Frontiers suspends Afghan operations after suspected terrorist attack
From the NY Times: Quote:
Aid Agency Halts Operations in Afghanistan
By CARLOTTA GALL
Published: June 3, 2004
KABUL, Afghanistan, June 3 — Doctors Without Borders suspended operations in Afghanistan today, a day after five of its workers were ambushed and killed, officials said.
The suspension will affect the organization's staff of 80 foreign employees and 1,400 Afghan employees, Nelke Manders, director of the Dutch branch of Doctors Without Borders, said at a news conference today.
The five aid workers were from the organization's Dutch branch. They were attacked on Wednesday in northwest Afghanistan as they were returning to their regional office, officials said.
The killings were another blow to the embattled aid workers in Afghanistan, who have seen 32 of their colleagues, and at least 5 other foreigners, killed since March 2003, often by Taliban and other militants intent on stalling aid and reconstruction efforts.
Abdul Hakim Latifi, a spokesman for the Taliban, who were driven from power in the American-led invasion in 2001, claimed responsibility for the attack in telephone calls to news agencies. "We killed them because they worked for the Americans against us using the cover of aid work," Mr. Latifi told Reuters. "We will kill more foreign aid workers," he said.
Three foreigners — a Belgian woman, a Dutch man and a Norwegian man — and two Afghan men, all working for the Dutch branch of the medical aid organization Doctors Without Borders, were killed when gunmen fired on their vehicle east of Qala-i-Nau, the capital of the Badghis Province.
Local officials said the killings occurred just before dusk as the five aid workers were returning to Qala-i-Nau from a village clinic.
Officials said they could not be sure if the attack was banditry or a terrorist assault on a foreign aid organization. "In the past, we have not seen such attacks — this is the first," the governor of Badghis Province, Azizullah Afzali, said by telephone.
But he said the aid workers were not carrying money, and he did not rule out a Taliban-inspired attack.
The provincial police chief, Amir Shah Nayebzada, said he thought Taliban supporters staged the attack. "They have increased their attempts in the area recently," he said.
The latest shootings bring to at least 10 the number of foreign civilians who have been killed while working in Afghanistan in slightly more than a year, and seem to confirm warnings from the United States military and Afghan officials that the Taliban would increase attacks before elections in September.
Last month, two British security specialists working on the United Nations election program were killed in an ambush in northeastern Afghanistan, and two Europeans were found bludgeoned to death in a Kabul park. Three foreigners were killed last year in attacks by people suspected of being Taliban members.
| The reasonings for striking an aid agency with a terrorist attack, if that is what this turns out to be, baffles me. Attacking the occupying forces can be understandable, but targetting agencies like the Red Cross and MSF, whose only purpose is to help people, shows a callous disregard for human life, and can't be helpful to their cause. __________________ This is my confession, I need your heart
In this depression, I need your heart |
