KABUL — The first sign of danger was the crackle of gunfire over their heads. Ten gunmen, their faces covered, rushed toward terrified humanitarian workers in Afghanistan and began shouting “Satellite! Satellite!” — a demand to surrender their phones.
Moments later, 10 of them lay dead, including two women hiding in the back seat of a car the attackers hit with a grenade, according to an Afghan official familiar with the account given by the sole survivor.
It is the first detailed narrative of the slaying of six Americans — including Durango dentist Tom Grams — two Afghans, one German and a Briton on Aug. 5 in remote northern Afghanistan. They were ambushed and shot after journeying about 100 miles — much of it on foot and horseback — through the Hindu Kush mountains, giving eye and other medical care to impoverished villagers.
Afghan and U.S. investigators spent at least four hours this week questioning the survivor, a 24-year-old father of three named Safiullah. He was employed as a driver for International Assistance Mission, a nonprofit Christian organization that has worked in Afghanistan since 1966.
Safiullah, who like many Afghans uses only one name, told investigators that the killings occurred about 7:30 or 8:30 a.m., according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to disclose details of the ongoing investigation.
The official, whose information has proven reliable in the past, said Safiullah, who is being held but not behind bars, gave the following account of how the killings unfolded.
At the end of the trip, the team members spent their final night in a village. The next morning, riding in four-wheel-drive vehicles, they encountered a river swollen by heavy rains. An Afghan man in the area offered to help the team find a spot shallow enough for the vehicles to ford the river. After successfully crossing, the team stopped to take a break.
The Afghan man who had offered to help the group left. Then came the attack. The gunmen rushed in, firing bullets over the medical team members’ heads.
“What’s happening?” shouted team leader Tom Little, an optometrist from Delmar, N.Y.
A gunman struck Little in the head with the back of an AK-47 rifle. Little fell bleeding to the ground. When he tried to get up, the attackers fatally shot him in the torso.
Two of three female members of the team had jumped inside one SUV to hide. The attackers tossed a grenade at the vehicle, killing them both. Then, one by one, they killed the rest of the group — except the driver.
Safiullah told investigators he believes the lead gunman was Pakistani. He said the attackers conversed in a dialect used only in parts of the northeast corner of Afghanistan.
Safiullah said he doesn’t know why he survived while two other Afghan members of the team were killed. He said he raised his arms in the air and recited verses from the Koran as he begged the gunmen for his life.
After the killings, the gunmen took Safiullah with them on a seven- or eight-hour hike through a forest, then met up with another group of people, who asked Safiullah whether he was a Muslim, his father’s name, how many children he had and how he got a job working for foreigners. The gunmen told Safiullah that he could leave, but he told investigators he feared he would be shot in the back if he did so. He said he dropped to his knees and began hugging the legs of one of the men.
Eventually convinced that they had no plans to kill him, Safiullah said he started running. Safiullah said he eventually found his way back to the town in the Kuran Wa Munjan district of Nuristan province where the group had left their three four-wheel-drive vehicles and rented eight horses at the beginning of the trip.
The bodies of four of the Americans, escorted by FBI personnel, were flown to the United States on Wednesday aboard U.S. military aircraft, said Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.
