Afghanistan: A kidnapped aid worker was killed during the rescue

Afghanistan, October 9, 2010: As announced by the British Foreign Minister, William Hague, “A British kidnapped on late September in Afghanistan died during a U.S. rescue on Friday night.”

He added that “I very much regret to meet the obligation to confirm that Linda Norgrove aid worker kidnapped in Afghanistan on September 26, was killed by her abductors during the rescue operation carried out last night.”

“We received information from the scene in which Linda was still captured and decided that, given the danger, her best chance of being safe release was that we acted on the basis of this information.”

“The responsibility for this tragic conclusion rests entirely on the captors. From the time when she was kidnapped, her life was seriously threatened. Given the kind of people who kept her hostage, we thought it was best to try to save it.”

Linda Norgrove, 36, was abducted Sept. 26 along with three Afghan escorts east of the country. She worked for many years in humanitarian organizations in Peru, Afghanistan and Laos, also for the UN in Kabul in 2005 and 2008, before returning to the country in February 2010 with the American NGO DAI, funded by the U.S. development agency USAID.