Militants kill 9 Afghans working Czech charity

KABUL, Afghanistan — Militants attacked a remote guesthouse and killed nine Afghans working for a Czech charity early Tuesday, and a new report by a U. S. university said almost 100,000 people have been killed in Afghanistan since the 2001 U. S.- led invasion.

Tuesday’s attack took place in the Zari district of northern Balkh province at 2 a. m., when gunmen burst into the workers’ rooms as they slept, said Abdul Basset Ayni, director of the province’s rural development department.

Nine people, including a woman, who were working on reconstruction projects were shot dead. They were employed by a Czech organization called People in Need, and included five project staff members, two guards and two drivers, the charity’s country director Ross Hollister said.

Hollister said they were working on infrastructure projects for the Afghan government’s National Solidarity Program, which oversees rural development projects.

“They were building schools, hospitals, water projects,” Hollister said. People in Need has been in Afghanistan for 12 years, he said, and working projects in all 104 of Zari’s villages.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani condemned the attack as the work of “terrorists.” The charity said the assault was “unprecedented in its brutality” and announced it was suspending work in Afghanistan.

Mark Bowden, the United Nations’ humanitarian coordinator for Afghanistan said he was appalled by the attack, which “highlights the challenges aid workers face and the unacceptable sacrifices” they make working in Afghanistan.

All the dead were Afghan citizens, Ayni said, adding that an investigation team had been sent to the area. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but Balkh has recently been beset by insurgent activity and a spike in violence since the Taliban launched its warm- weather offensive in late April.

A revitalized insurgency appears to be using a new strategy of sending much larger numbers of men on the battlefield to fight and hold territory. Afghan officials said the Taliban has linked up with other anti- government and extremist groups, including the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and the East Turkestan Independence Movement.

Meanwhile, a study by Brown University said almost 100,000 people have been killed since the overthrow the Taliban, which sparked the insurgency. The study — produced by the university’s Watson Institute for International Studies — looked at war- related deaths, injuries and displacement in Afghanistan and Pakistan from 2001 to last year, when international combat troops left Afghanistan.

Along with those killed, it said another 100,000 people had been wounded in Afghanistan. For both countries, civilian and military deaths total almost 149,000 people killed, with 162,000 seriously wounded, according to the report’s author, Neta Crawford.