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This is awful and sad. 
Medical Aid Workers Killed in AfghanistanMedical Aid Workers Killed in Afghanistan
Secretary's Remarks: Killing of Medical Aid Workers in Afghanistan
Hillary Rodham Clinton: On Friday, Afghan police officers discovered the bodies of 10 medical aid workers who were killed in the northern Badakhshan Province. Six were American.
The Taliban has proudly claimed responsibility for this despicable act of wanton violence.
These men and women were in the region to deliver free medical care to impoverished Afghan villagers, according to the NGO they were working with. They were doctors, nurses, and medical technicians, and their mission was humanitarian and wholly independent from that of any government. Before their deaths, they had spent several days treating cataracts and other eye conditions in the Nuristan Province. At their next stop, they planned to run a dental clinic and offer maternal and infant health
care. They were unarmed. They were not being paid for their services. They had traveled to this distant part of the world because they wanted to help people in need. They were guests of the Afghan people.
The Taliban stopped them on a remote road on their journey from Nuristan, led them into a forest, robbed them, and killed them.
We are heartbroken by the loss of these heroic, generous people. We condemn in the strongest possible terms this senseless act. We also condemn the Taliban's transparent attempt to justify the unjustifiable by making false accusations about their activities in Afghanistan.
Terror has no religion, and these acts are rejected by people all over the world, including by Muslims here in the United States. The Taliban's cruelty is well-documented. Its members have assassinated tribal elders and thrown acid in the face of young girls. Earlier this summer, they accused a 7-year-old boy of spying and hung him. With these killings, they have shown us yet another example of the lengths to which they will go to advance their twisted ideology.
The murdered medical aid workers, as well as the volunteers from many nations and the international coalition working to establish stability in Afghanistan, represent exactly what the Taliban stands against: a future of peace, freedom, opportunity, and openness, where all Afghans can live and work together in harmony, free from terror.
That is what we are working to achieve in Afghanistan, in partnership with the Afghan people. As we mourn the loss of these aid workers, we will continue with our own efforts, inspired by their example.
Source: U.S. Department of State
FOXNews.com - Charity plans to stay in Afghanistan despite murders of 10 aid workersDuring a press conference Monday, Dirk Frans, the director of the International Assistance Mission that organized the trip, insisted that conversion was not the aim of the trip and that the Afghan government had given them permission to treat Afghans in the area.
He said the IAM had made no secret that it was a Christian organization during its four decades in Afghanistan and was legally registered with the Afghan government.
"Our faith motivates and inspires us but we do not proselytize," he said. "We abide by the laws of Afghanistan" that make proselytizing illegal.
Frans said "as things stand right now" his organization has no plans to leave Afghanistan, having operated here during the Soviet occupation of the 1990s, the civil war of the 1990s and during five years of Taliban rule.
But Frans acknowledged that the losses left the organization "devastated."
Team leader Tom Little, 62, of Delmar, New York, and Dan Terry, 64, had worked in Afghanistan for more than 30 years and had raised families here. As a sign of the group's commitment to this country, Frans said the families of five of the eight foreigners had chosen to bury their relatives in Afghanistan.
Frans said he had asked Little why there weren't more Afghans and fewer foreigners on the mission. Frans quoted Little as saying such missions needed to be spearheaded by "committed expatriates" and that the Afghans would take over later.
The three other Americans were Brian Carderelli, 25, of Harrisonburg, Virginia, the videographer for the mission; Cheryl Beckett, 32, of Knoxville, Tennessee, an expert in nutritional gardening and mother-child health; Dr. Tom Grams, 51, of Durango, Colorado, a dentist; and Glen Lapp, a nurse from Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Other foreigners were Dr. Karen Woo, 36, a British surgeon who was to marry in a few weeks; and Daniela Beyer, 35, a translator from Chemnitz, Germany. The two Afghans were Mahram Ali, a driver; and Jawed, a cook. Another Afghan member of the team, ophthalmological technician Saeed Yaseen, left separately before the attack.
The lone survivor of the attack, Saifullah, had worked for IAM for four years and was described as a trusted colleague. He told authorities he was spared after pleading for his life and reciting verses from the Islamic holy book, the Quran.
Lancaster County man Glen D. Lapp among Afghan ambush victims | Philadelphia Inquirer | 08/09/2010Lancaster County man Glen D. Lapp among Afghan ambush victims
By Maria Panaritis
Inquirer Staff Writer
He was an avid cyclist. A nurse with a big smile. A man whose passion for hiking, adventure, and people was plain to see.
"A beautiful person," said an adoring friend.
And on Sunday, in news that stunned neighbors and loved ones in tranquil Lancaster County, Glen D. Lapp was named a casualty of a war that had drawn him as a volunteer but ended his life in a massacre.
Lapp, his family learned from the State Department, was among 10 medical-aid workers slaughtered in a Taliban ambush last week in Afghanistan.
In 2008, the practicing Mennonite Christian had left a block of modest twin homes in Manheim Township to volunteer through the Mennonite Central Committee, a nationwide group whose aid missions largely originate from an office in Akron, Lancaster County.
"We're very, very sad, and we're very sad for his family, especially," said Lari Walker, a neighbor so close to the Lapps that she hesitated to say more lest she show disrespect for his loved ones.
"Glen was just a beautiful person," Walker said. "He loved other people, and he loved helping people."
He leaves behind his mother, Mary, his father, Marvin, and two brothers.
Mary Lapp declined to take questions when reached at home last night, instead referring media calls to the Mennonite aid organization with which her son had been serving.
"They're really suffering," Cheryl Zehr Walker, the group's director of communications, said last night of the Lapps.
Lapp, 40, was among 10 medical volunteers whose bullet-riddled bodies were found Friday in northern Afghanistan: six Americans, two Afghans, a German, and a Briton. The workers had spent several weeks delivering medical aid to villagers. They were ambushed on the way back to the capital city, Kabul.
The Taliban and a lesser-known insurgent group claimed responsibility and accused the group of trying to convert Muslims to Christianity.
Lapp, one of two of the Mennonite organization's volunteers working in Afghanistan with partner agencies, had been part of an "eye camp" medical team that had been delivering treatments and tests for eye diseases, according to the group's statement.
The Mennonite group describes itself as a Christian relief, development, and peace-building organization active in 60 countries worldwide.
Lapp was a member of the Community Mennonite Church of Lancaster. He had begun volunteering with the aid group in 2006, when from a desk in Akron he helped coordinate disaster relief to the U.S. Gulf Coast after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Walker said.
Lapp was a graduate of Johns Hopkins University and Eastern Mennonite University.
He was due to return from Afghanistan in October.
In a recent written dispatch to the Mennonite aid group, Lapp had reflected on his work there.
" . . . [T]he main thing that expats can do is to be a presence in the country," he wrote, according to excerpts released by the group. "Treating people with respect and with love and trying to be a little bit of Christ in this part of the world."
The partner organization coordinating Lapp's eye team - International Assistance Mission - lost touch with him and his group on Thursday evening, when members of the Kabul-bound medical mission did not check in as expected after leaving the remote villages where they had been working.
Ten bodies were found Friday, making international headlines. On Sunday morning, official word came: U.S. Embassy officials contacted the Lapp family to say he had been among those killed.
Lapp had most recently served as executive assistant and manager of the International Assistance Mission's provincial ophthalmic-care program, according to the separate Mennonite group.
"I'm shocked," said Karen Ward, 46, an elementary schoolteacher who lived two doors down from Lapp. She had not heard about his death until a reporter telephoned her last night. "I had no idea Glen was killed."
After nearly breaking into tears, Ward composed herself enough to describe him: "Very, very friendly, very quiet, very energetic. Always doing something."
On a block of "real small yards," Ward said, Lapp was always eager to help. Although their interactions were largely limited to waving and saying "hello," it was enough to leave an impression.
"He was a very nice person," Ward said. "If you needed any help shoveling your walk, mowing your yard, he was there."