The International Assistance Mission (IAM), the Christian aid agency whose medical team of workers were brutally killed last week in Afghanistan now suspects that the assault was "an opportunistic ambush by a group of non-local fighters," and not a robbery as previously supposed by some leading security experts.
IAM has been conducting its own research into last Thursday’s mass murder of ten of its staff who were on a trip to the impoverished villages of the Nuristan province in northeastern Afghanistan. The team was visiting the villages to provide medical care, most specifically to those suffering with eye problems.
The team had trekked about 100 miles through the Hindu Kush Mountains in their SUV vehicles. They were then forced to cross a swollen river on foot, and it was when they returned to their vehicles after concluding the visit to the villages that they were attacked. Most of the team was shot while two of the women who tried to hide in a vehicle were killed with a hand-grenade, according to the Christian Post.
The IAM leadership team is however waiting on "the outcome of the official investigation by the relevant departments of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and its partners," said IAM Executive Director Dirk R. Frans.