The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) draws consequences from the murder of six employees in northern Afghanistan. Accordi...
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) draws consequences from the murder of six employees in northern Afghanistan. According to the speaker in Kabul, Thomas Glass, the ICRC stops its work in the country until further notice.
The six Afghan ICRC employees were shot dead in the northern Afghan province of Jauskshan by suspected members of the terrorism "Islamic State" (IS). Two more are still missing.
"We decided to suspend the work," Glass said. "We've been in Afghanistan for 30 years, and we're not going to leave the Afghans alone, that's clear, but we have to look at what this attack means to us and how we can continue our activities." In the seven orthopedic centers of the ICRC, however, patients were treated further.
The Red Cross has so far enjoyed a special protection status for all conflict parties in Afghanistan. There were only a few strokes for a long time. But it was only in January that a Spanish ICRC employee had been kidnapped in the North Afghan province of Kunduz.
The ICRC has about 2,000 employees in Afghanistan and works in the fields of health care, human rights and emergency relief. According to the United Nations in 2016, there were more than 200 attacks on development and emergency aid in Afghanistan. Fifteen of them were murdered.
Syrians also attacked helpers. At the same time, four employees of the Red Crescent, the sister organization of the ICRC, were injured in Aleppo. They distributed relief supplies in Aleppo, the Red Crescent said. The ICRC said three people were killed and seven injured in an attack in an Aleppo district, among them employees of the Red Crescent.
