U.S Airman, Nicholas J. Alden

Nicholas J. Alden

USAF Senior Airman Nicholas J. Alden, aged 25, from Williamston, S.C., was shot dead on 2nd March 2011 at Frankfurt Airport, Germany.

He was assigned to the 48th Security Forces Squadron, RAF Lakenheath, United Kingdom, and was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom.

The gunman, who is now in custody, was apparently a 21 year old Kosovo national, police said.

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Two French Marines killed in gunfight

Marine Lt. Lorenzo Mezzasalma

French Marines Lieutenant Lorenzo Mezzasalma, age 43 and Corporal Jean-Nicolas Panezyck, age 25, were killed August 23, 2010, during an operation south of Tagab, Afghanistan. They died from gunshot wounds in a fierce battle with insurgents.

Corporal Jean-Nicolas Panezyck

The two men were assigned to the 21st Marine Infantry Regiment.

New York optometrist, Tom Little, killed in Afghanistan

In the remote rural villages of Afghanistan, the big-hearted New Yorker was known simply as Mr. Tom.

For more than three decades, opthamologist Tom Little made his home and did his work in the war-torn nation, raising three daughters while treating thousands of needy patients each year.

Little, who survived the 1979 war with the Russians and exile by the Taliban in 2001, was shot to death while heading home after a humanitarian mission in northern Afghanistan.

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Aid worker shot dead in Kabul

Gayle Williams

Gayle Williams was an aid worker for SERVE Afghanistan of joint British and South African nationality. She was shot dead on her way to work in Kabul by two men on a motorbike on 20th October 2008.

Zabiullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Taliban, claimed responsibility for her death and said she had been killed "because she was working for an organization which was preaching Christianity in Afghanistan."

Japanese aid worker shot dead in Nangarhar

The bullet-riddled body of an abducted Japanese aid worker was recovered Wednesday, the latest grim symbol of insurgents' apparent determination to drive foreign humanitarian groups from Afghanistan. Afghan and Japanese authorities identified the slain man as Kazuya Ito, an engineer who was seized by gunmen a day earlier in Nangarhar province, east of Kabul.

 The Japanese engineer worked for an aid organization called Peshawar-kai, meaning the Peshawar group, based in Fukuoka, Japan. It is named for a Pakistani city just across the border that is home to hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees.

Ito, 31, was working on agricultural development projects in a remote eastern area of Afghanistan, Japanese diplomats and colleagues said. Authorities said gunmen stopped his car Tuesday near the city of Jalalabad, which lies on the main road connecting Kabul, the Afghan capital, and the border with Pakistan. Ito's Afghan driver was released unharmed.

Five Aid Workers shot Badghis Province

Five Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) staff were killed 2nd June 2004 while traveling on the road between Khairkhana and Qala-I-Naw in Badghis province.

They were: Hélène de Beir, Belgian national, Project Coordinator; Willem Kwint, Dutch national, Logistician; Egil Tynaes, Norwegian national, Medical Doctor; Fasil Ahmad, Afghan national, Translator; Besmillah, Afghan national, Driver.

L-R: Helene, Willem, Egil, Fasil, Besmillah

Statement by Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) reads: They departed from Khairkhana at 1500 hours in a Toyota Landcruiser. Radio contact should have been established at 1545 hours, but this contact was not established. Two cars were sent to check for the vehicle, one departing from Khairkhana, the second from Qala-I-Naw. The vehicle was located at approximately 1720, about 25 minutes from Khairkhana in the direction of Qala-I-Naw. 

Initial reports from local elders suggested a tragedy had occurred. Through the efforts of the local community the vehicle was brought back to the MSF compound in Khairkhana. The vehicle was back in the compound by 1945 hours and the remaining four expatriate team members and our national staff team confirmed the shooting of our five colleagues.

The condition of the vehicle was described as having been shot through the front windscreen, through the front passenger window, and through the back windscreen. There was also shrapnel embedded in the side of the vehicle, indicating a grenade had been detonated.

It is impossible for us to give any further details as we simply don't know anything more about what happened. Nor do we know who is behind the killings or the motives for it.

Red Cross aid worker killed in Kandahar

International Red Cross staff member Ricardo Munguia was shot and killed in an ambush north of Kandahar City 24th March 2003.

A water supply engineer, Ricardo Munguía was a citizen of both Switzerland and El Salvador. He joined the International Committee of the Red Cross 1999.

He was fatally shot on March 27, 2003, by gunmen while on assignment with several Afghan colleagues in Oruzgan province, although another account placed the incident at a Taliban checkpoint in the Shah Wali Kot district of Kandahar. He was 39.

This marked the first murder of a foreign aid worker in Afghanistan in at least five years. Munguía's murder sparked concerns that security issues would prevent aid workers from reaching more of Afghanistan's most vulnerable people.

According to eyewitness Abdul Salam, after stopping Munguía and his three-vehicle convoy, gunmen made a satellite telephone call to Mullah Dadullah. When the conversation ended the gunmen shoved Munguía behind one of the vehicles, siphoned gasoline from the tanks and used it to set the vehicles on fire. Munguía was then executed, reportedly hit by more than 20 bullets.