An international Christian aid group denied today Taliban accusations that its team of foreign medical workers killed in Afghanistan's remote northeast had been spreading Christianity.
The bodies of 10 medical aid workers, eight foreigners and two Afghans, were flown by helicopter from Badakshan province to Kabul today, the US embassy said, confirming that six of the dead were Americans.
The International Assistance Mission (IAM) had said the victims were members of its 12-strong eye care team that had been working in Badakshan and neighbouring Nuristan.
IAM said the team consisted of six Americans, a German, a Briton and four Afghans. Five of the foreigners were men and three women. Two Afghans escaped alive.
Yesterday, the Taliban claimed responsibility for the killings, saying the workers had been carrying bibles in Dari - one of Afghanistan's two main languages - and were killed because they were promoting Christianity.
"The accusation is completely baseless; they were not carrying any bibles except maybe their personal bibles," Dirk Frans, the executive director of IAM, said.
"As an organisation we are not involved in proselytising at all."
The family of the British victim, Dr Karen Woo, also denied that she had been proselytising. "Her motivation was purely humanitarian. She was a Humanist and had no religious or political agenda," they said in a statement.
Dr Woo, who worked for the separate Bridge Afghanistan group, had written in a recent blog posting that she would act as the team doctor and run a mother-and-child clinic in Nuristan.
The US embassy said in a statement that it would not release names of the dead at this stage.
"Consular staff and FBI special agents assigned to the US embassy in Kabul, alongside Afghan counterparts and representatives from the UK and German embassies, worked to identify the victims of this tragic attack," it said.
Despite the Taliban claim, there was no independent confirmation of any role by the Islamist group.
Reuters