6 Pak female aid workers killed

Six women and a man working for a health education charity in northwest Pakistan were shot dead on their way home from a community center yesterday, officials said. Police said they were investigating whether there was any link to the Taleban or other militants, who have been blamed for past attacks on charity workers and on health education projects in particular. The attack took place about 65 km from the capital in the Swabi district. The victims were all Pakistanis and worked for local charity Ujalla, which runs health education classes and employed health visitors. Five of the women were teachers, the sixth was a health worker and the man worked as a health technician, officials said. They were being driven home from a village community center when they were attacked, said Abdul Rashid Khan, Swabi police chief. “Four men came on two motorbikes. They attacked their van, a Toyota HiAce. They opened fire to the right and left of the van and fled,” Khan told AFP. “Six women and a man have died. The driver is injured,” he added. Police said the women were aged 20 to 35 and the male health technician was 52. Doctor Mohammad Sheerin at the local Bacha Khan medical complex said one man had been critically wounded and evacuated to the northwestern city of Peshawar. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, near a junction for the motorway which connects the northwestern city of Peshawar to the eastern city of Lahore. Police said the motive was under investigation. “A wave of terrorism is continuing in (the northwestern province of) Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, so we are investigating whether it’s a part of the same wave or there were any other motives,” said Khan. Charity workers condemned the attack and called for protection. “Schools and NGOs have been threatened in the recent past. Several government schools had been bombed in the last several months,” said Rooh ul-Amin, who heads an umbrella organization of charities in Swabi. He said eight months ago the guest house where he receives visitors was bombed and another bomb was found near his office four months ago. Idrees Kamal, the coordinator of Pakhtunkhwa Civil Society Network, demanded that the killers by arrested, and called for protection and compensation. “PCSN demands that the provincial government arrests the killers of the welfare workers and compensation for the deceased. PCSN will formulate a joint strategy to tackle the matter,” he said in a statement. Last month nine polio vaccination workers were shot dead in a string of attacks in Karachi and northwest Pakistan. Those killings prompted the UN children’s agency and the World Health Organization to suspend work on polio campaigns in the country. Last month a Swedish woman charity worker died after being shot in the chest in Lahore where she worked for the US-founded Full Gospel Assemblies, which runs wcharities including a technical training institute and adult literacy center. In August 2011 US development worker Warren Weinstein was kidnapped after gunmen tricked their way into his Lahore home. Pakistani officials believe he is being held by Al-Qaeda and Taleban extremists in Pakistan’s lawless northwest. In April 2012, a British Muslim Red Cross worker was beheaded after being kidnapped in the southwestern city of Quetta. Pakistan has been battling a homegrown Taleban insurgency for five years, as well as a separatist Baluch uprising in the southwest. It also suffers from routine attacks blamed on a series of hard-line Islamist factions. Islamabad says more than 35,000 people have been killed as a result of terrorism in the country since the 9/11 attacks on the United States.