Six aid workers, of a U.S.-based Christian charity were killed and eight others wounded in an attack in a remote village of Pakistan’s Mansehra district on Wednesday. Two of the aid workers were women, according to a Pakistani daily.
A government official said that the attack on World Vision’s offices appeared to be the work of militants, according to a report in the Pakistani newspaper Dawn.
A group of 12 to 13 gunmen stormed the offices of World Vision in the Oghi village, put all the employees in one room and started shooting, the report said, adding that the attackers threw grenades that brought the building down.
“The assailants were from different ethnic groups. They spoke Urdu, Hindko and Pashtu languages. They rounded up the aid workers while shouting at them that they had been warned to stop spreading obscenity,” an official quoted an injured worker who survived the attack as saying.
World Vision has been operating in the area since the October 2005 earthquake, helping women and children.
Source: Dawn, Pakistan, March 11, 2010
