Three more victims of Afghan attack identified

Kabul, Afghanistan (News Today) - The U.S. Embassy in Kabul has identified three more victims from the attack on 10 multinational medical aid workers in Afghanistan.

Six Americans, two Afghans, a Briton and a German were shot and killed Thursday by gunmen in Badakhshan, a remote northeastern region of the country, said Dirk Frans, the director of the International Assistance Mission. Two other Afghans on the team were alive, Frans said.

The bodies of the two Afghans have been handed back to their families. The bodies of the foreign vicitims will be handed to their respective embassies, the Afghan interior ministry said Monday.

The three victims who were identified Sunday are:

-- Glen D. Lapp of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

On Sunday morning, Lapp's family received confirmation of his death from the U.S. Embassy, said the Mennonite Central Committee. Lapp worked for the committee's partner organization, the International Assistance Mission, which provided eye care and medical help in Afghanistan.

While Lapp, 40, was trained as a nurse, his work in Afghanistan was not as a medic, the Mennonite committee said. In his two years there, Lapp was executive assistant at the International Assistance Mission and manager of the charity's provincial ophthalmic care program.

-- Cheryl Beckett, the daughter of a minister in Knoxville, Tennessee.

As a student at Indiana Wesleyan University, Beckett developed a global passion for justice and love during her travels to Honduras, Mexico, Kenya and Zimbabwe, according to her obituary.

The 28-year-old woman spent the last six years in Afghanistan, with a focus on nutritional gardening and mother-child health.

"Cheryl loved and respected the Afghan people. She denied herself many freedoms in order to abide by Afghan law and custom," said a statement from her family released by the Woodlawn Christian Church in Knoxville.

"She was honored to be included in this most recent three-week medical journey to the remote populations of Northern Afghanistan. ...Those who committed this act of terror should feel the utter shame and disgust that humanity feels for them.

-- Dan Terry.

Among the victims previously identified are:

-- Thomas Grams of Durango, Colorado.

Grams had been working with Global Dental Relief for 10 years, and had been to Afghanistan several times, along with Nepal, said Katy Shaw, an administrator with the group.

He was a general dentist who gave up his private practice to do relief work, Shaw said. Grams started as a volunteer with the group, which provides dental care for impoverished children, but later became a team leader.

-- Team leader Tom Little, an optometrist.

Little's wife, Libby, confirmed the death. She said she knew the worst had happened when she didn't hear from her husband after 24 hours. She described a system they established years ago -- he would give her a short, 30-second call every 12 hours to let her know he was okay. When two cycles went by without a call from her husband, she said she knew something was wrong.

Little had recently become involved in a program to eradicate preventable blindness by the year 2020, his wife said.

"He would come back to the States and get throw-away optical equipment, then refurbished it, then would send it over to set up a little optical manufacturing factory, so they could make their own eyeglasses there," Libby Little said about her husband.

-- Dr. Karen Woo, 36, is the lone Briton among the dead.

The British Foreign Office confirmed her death.

Woo's friend, Firuz Rahimi, confirmed her death to CNN and said his friend gave up a comfortable life in London to work in Afghanistan.

Rahimi said he spoke with Woo three weeks ago, while she was packing for a trip with the assistance mission to Nuristan.

He told CNN that Woo had medicine and medical equipment procured after a period of fundraising. Woo was excited about the trip but was fully aware of the risks she faced making this kind of journey, he said.

On Sunday, U.S. officials issued a scathing condemnation of the attack.

The Taliban has claimed responsibility for the Thursday attack, said Karl Eikenberry, U.S. ambassador in Afghanistan, but "we do not know whether they are responsible or simply taking credit for the cowardly and despicable acts of others."

Aqa Nwor Kentoz, the police chief in the province, said the gunmen stopped the group on the road, took their belongings and shot them one by one.

An Afghan was released because he was reciting excerpts from the Quran, Kentoz said.

The team had spent several days in Nuristan province, where they treated cataracts and other eye conditions, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a statement.

"At their next stop, they planned to run a dental clinic and offer maternal and infant health care," Clinton said. "They were unarmed. They were not being paid for their services. They had traveled to this distant part of the world because they wanted to help people in need. They were guests of the Afghan people. The Taliban stopped them on a remote road on their journey from Nuristan, led them into a forest, robbed them and killed them."

Badakhshan, bordered by Tajikistan to the north and Pakistan to the south, is a sparsely populated region comprised of a majority Tajik population and an Uzbek and Kyrgyz minority. Badakhshan was the only province that was not controlled by the Taliban when it ruled Afghanistan.

Source : CNN

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