In an ambush that highlighted the growing dangers faced by foreign charity organizations in Afghanistan, Taliban fighters gunned down a 10-member international medical team, including six Americans, in the country’s northern wilderness, the aid group and local officials said Saturday.

According to provincial police and the International Assistance Mission, the Kabul-based group that organized the trip, the 10 aid workers—who also included two Afghans, a German, and a Briton—were attacked in a remote forested area of Badakhshan province as they were returning from a mission to provide eye care to rural villagers.

The ambush was one of the deadliest strikes against foreign aid workers in the nearly nine-year Afghanistan war. It also represented the largest toll for US civilians working in the country since a suicide bomber killed seven members of a CIA team at a base in eastern Afghanistan in December.

The Taliban has increasingly targeted foreign aid workers, whom it views as collaborators with the Western military. Gunmen and suicide bombers stormed last month the offices of the US-based development group DAI in Kunduz province, also in Afghanistan’s north, killing at least five people.

(Thanks to Los Angeles Times and Wikipedia)