A woman working with a UK-registered Christian relief organisation has been shot dead in Kabul by Taliban militants, who accused her of spreading Christianity among Afghans while assisting people with severe disabilities and training local aid workers.
The aid worker, Gayle Williams, aged 34, was a South African national working for the UK registered charity SERVE. She was killed at 8am as she walked to work in the west of Kabul by two armed men on a motorcycle.
Observers say that the case highlights the increasing pressure humanitarian workers are under in Afghanistan, with the majority of the victims of violence being Afghans rather than Westerners - though it is the latter who attract publicity in the large Western news outlets.
"Our people carried out this attack in District 3 of Kabul this morning at 7am," the Taliban's spokesman Zabiullah Mujahed told The Times newspaper. "The reason that we killed her was because she was spreading Christianity."
SERVE resolutely denies that it is involved in proselytism.
This is the first killing of a Western aid worker in Kabul, which was once regarded as 'safe' but is now under immense pressure from armed groups who see the current government as a stooge of US-led invaders.
Similarly, Christians are all thought of as "crusaders" by militants, and most Westerners are now deemed targets.
SERVE said tonight that it had not reached a decision about whether to stay or go in the light of the killing. Some humanitarian groups believe it is important to maintain solidarity with the ordinary people of Afganistan and to refuse intimidation. But they also recognise a clear duty towards their workers, both local and international.
A spokesperson for the UK-based international development agency Christian Aid, which has no links with SERVE but supports Afghan NGOs through partnership agreements, told Channel 4 News that its workers refuse proselytism and that its operations have nothing to do with the military 'hearts and minds' strategy.
Regarding Ms Williams' death, Zmarai Bashary told The Times: "Two armed men sitting on a motorbike shot her dead. Some bullets hit her body and some hit her leg and when police got there she was dead."
Aid agencies have expressed mounting unease at the spreading insecurity in the country in recent months.
There have been 146 security incidents involving non-governmental organisations working in Afghanistan so far this year, compared to 135 for the whole of last year, according to the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office which monitors NGO security.
Twenty-eight aid workers have been killed, among them five internationals, so far this year. There have also been 72 abductions of aid workers.
Three female aid workers from the International Rescue Committee, one of them British, were killed by Taliban militants in an ambush on a road south of Kabul in August 2008.
Some 50 Afghan civilians were killed by the Taliban in Kandahar recently, reportedly by beheading.
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