The FBI is conducting its own probe into the deaths of six Americans who were among eight foreign workers on a medical aid project gunned down in Afghanistan in an attack claimed by the Taliban.
The Afghan interior ministry is also investigating the killings in the country’s north-east, which US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton condemned as “a despicable act of wanton violence”.
The bodies of the workers — five US men and three women, an American, a German and a Briton — were found in Badakhshan province on Friday. Two Afghans were also shot dead and while the group’s driver survived.
The murdered foreigners were volunteers with the Christian aid group International Assistance Mission (IAM) and were mostly medics working on an eye-care project, but also included a US filmmaker.
US officials and the charity denied Taliban claims that they were proselytisers and spies.
A US embassy spokesperson in Kabul said on Monday that the FBI has opened an investigation in cooperation with local authorities.
“Under federal law, the FBI has jurisdiction to conduct investigations worldwide when US citizens are killed,” Caitlin Hayden said in a statement.
“Plans have not been finalised by the families and authorities involved, but one of several possibilities is returning the remains of the deceased US citizens with dignity to the United States for autopsies.”
The 10 bodies have been flown back to Kabul.
US special envoy Richard Holbrooke said on Monday that average Afghans were shocked at the Taliban-claimed murders.
“This was an act of a small ruthless minority, which is what the Taliban are,” he told reporters, adding that investigators had still to confirm the Taliban claim they were behind the killings.
“They [the Taliban] do not represent the popular will in Afghanistan and every poll, every survey … shows that their support is in the single digits,” Holbrooke said.
“But entrenched ruthless people have the ability to kill unarmed people who are coming back from a humanitarian mission. It’s not hard to do,” he said.
The Taliban and militant group Hizb-e-Islami separately claimed responsibility for the attack, which the interior ministry said was the work of “terrorists”.
The driver, named only as Saifullah, was spared apparently after he recited Qu’ranic to the gunmen, and is being questioned by interior ministry officials, IAM’s executive director Dirk Frans told reporters.
Saifullah said the team had set out by car, then trekked 160km through the Hindu Kush mountains in eastern Nuristan province to dispense medical care to remote communities. They were escorted by local residents, he said.
One of the Afghans on the original team left to return home to Nuristan, and the rest were with their vehicles en route to Kabul when the attack took place during a food stop in woodland, Frans said.
Among the murdered Americans was Tom Little, an optometrist who had lived in Afghanistan since the mid-1970s and raised his three daughters in Kabul through years of civil war and Taliban rule.
Abdullah Abdullah, a former presidential candidate who trained as an eye surgeon with Little, said the foreign medics were bringing desperately needed healthcare.
Dismissing the Taliban’s claims as “ridiculous”, Abdullah told the BBC: “These were dedicated people. Tom Little used to work in Afghanistan with his heart — he dedicated half of his life to service the people of Afghanistan.”
British doctor Karen Woo (36) had quit a job with a private healthcare firm in London to volunteer in Afghanistan, and on her blog had written with passion about life in the shattered country.
According to British media reports, she was preparing to return to London to marry a former British army officer in two weeks.
North-east Afghanistan has been regarded as largely free of the Taliban-led insurgency blighting other parts of the country.
The United Nations condemned the “cold-blooded execution” and called on the rights of medics to be upheld.
Frans said the organisation would continue to work in Afghanistan “as long as we are welcome here”. – AFP