Pakistan militants attack U.S. Christian aid group, killing six

Submitted by Narayan24 on Thu, 11/03/2010 - 8:38am

Militants stormed the northwest Pakistan offices of a U.S. Christian aid group Wednesday, killing six workers and injuring five, police said.

The attack took place in the Mansehra region, where World Vision opened an office to help victims of the 2005 earthquake that killed more than 70,000 people in northern Pakistan. All of the dead and injured in the attack were Pakistanis.

Villagers in the area said the gunmen came down from a nearby ridge, burst into the charity group's compound and began spraying gunfire and tossing hand grenades.

"We heard gunshots and loud explosions from inside the compound," said Munawar Shah, a villager. "The gunmen had their faces masked. They started firing indiscriminately inside."

World Vision, which is based near Seattle and has offices in the Los Angeles area, is one of several aid groups that established a presence in Mansehra to help earthquake victims. Local Pakistanis say militants in the region view the nongovernmental agencies as intruders intent on spreading Western values among villagers.

In 2008, militants killed four workers with Plan International, a British humanitarian organization, in the town. After that attack, several other aid groups closed down their Mansehra offices.

No group claimed responsibility for the attack Wednesday, but Mansehra is just east of Buner, one of the districts that the Taliban had infiltrated before a major offensive by the Pakistani military last summer drove them out.

Although Mansehra has been a relatively quiet section of northwest Pakistan, Wednesday's incident was the second militant attack to hit the region in the last four weeks. In February, suicide bombers attacked two police stations, killing a police chief and injuring several officers.

Source: The Los Angeles Times