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 told The Associated Press on 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, three 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 (160 kilometers) — much of it on foot and horseback — through the Hindu Kush mountains, giving vision and other medical care to impoverished villagers in Nuristan province.
The Department of Defense announced today that Ibrahim al Qosi was sentenced to 14 years in confinement for conspiracy and providing material support to al Qaeda.
The sentencing hearing took place in a military commission courtroom at the U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. It follows al Qosi’s guilty plea in July. During his guilty plea, al Qosi admitted that he engaged in hostilities against the United States in violation of the laws of war. He admitted that he intentionally supported al Qaeda since at least 1996, when Osama bin Laden issued an order urging his followers to commit acts of terrorism against the United States.
A suicide car bomber struck a police patrol west of Baghdad Sunday and killed eight people, most of them civilians standing in line outside a post office to collect the monthly stipend for the country's poorest, police officials said.
The blast comes just a day after explosions tore through a market in the south killing 43 people. Violence across Iraq has spiked in the past month as the U.S. moves ahead with a major drawdown of its troops set to be completed by the end of the month.
Special Report - 08/17/10
