KABUL — One of the gunmen who killed 10 charitable health workers in northern Afghanistan hitched a ride with the medical team shortly before the murders, the sole survivor of the attack said Saturday.
“God was good to me,” the team’s surviving driver, Safiullah, said in an interview punctuated by long pauses and tears for his slain colleagues.
On Aug. 5, the day of the attack, the medical team stopped to give three men a lift — a common courtesy in the rugged, remote area. Soon after, 10 members of the International Assistance Mission — six Americans, two Afghans, one German and a Briton — lay dead.
It was a tragic finale to the team’s more than two-week mission covering about 100 miles through the Hindu Kush mountains, giving vision and other medical care to impoverished villagers in Nuristan province.
Safiullah, seated on gold cushions propped up on red carpeting at his home in Kabul, said the team picked up three pedestrians on their return trip back to Kabul. They climbed atop one of the three four-wheel-drive vehicles.
After the team was stopped by a swollen river, two of the men went on their way. The third man “quickly disappeared,” Safiullah said in his first media interview since he was released by Afghan authorities this week.
Team leader Dr. Tom Little, an optometrist from Delmar, N.Y., and another team member waded into the river with long sticks to find a shallow place for the vehicles to safely cross, he said.
After successfully crossing, the team members stopped to ready themselves for their long trip back through Badakhshan province and on to the Afghan capital. Then came the attack.
Among the 10 gunmen was the third pedestrian, who had a patchy beard, Safiullah said, touching his own face to describe the only places where the man’s facial hair grew.
One gunman shot Little after hitting him in the head with the back of an AK-47 rifle. Another threw a grenade at one of the vehicles, killing two female members of the team who were hiding inside. Then they shot the team’s Afghan cook, who had used luggage to barricade himself under the car that was attacked and burned, Safiullah said.
The attackers murdered the rest of the group — except Safiullah, who raised his arms and recited verses from the Islamic holy book the Koran as he begged the gunmen for his life.
