Thumbnail sketches of 10 slain in attack on medical mission in northern Afghanistan

Sketches of 10 people slain in Afghan aid attack

KABUL, Afghanistan — A 12-member team with International Assistance Mission set off from Afghanistan’s capital for remote Nuristan province to operate a mobile clinic with eye doctors, a dentist and a general practitioner for people who had little access to medical care. Ten of the team were killed in an ambush Aug. 5 in neighboring Badakhshan province as they made their return trip to Kabul.

A look at those who died:

— Team leader Tom Little of Delmar, New York, had worked in Afghanistan since the late 1970s and was the “driving force” in the efforts of the International Assistance Mission, or IAM, to expand vision care in the country. Fluent in the Afghan language Dari, Little and his wife raised three daughters in Kabul despite political turmoil and a bloody civil war.

“He is irreplaceable,” IAM director Dirk Frans said.

The 61-year-old Little was affectionately known as “Mister Tom” among many staff at the NOOR eye hospital that he helped build. He recruited many of the team members to the Nuristan trip.

— Dr. Karen Woo, 36, the lone Briton among the dead, gave up her job with a private clinic in London to work in Afghanistan. She was planning to leave in a few weeks to get married, friends said.

“Her motivation was purely humanitarian. She was a humanist and had no religious or political agenda,” her family said in a statement. She was a general surgeon and went on the trip to bring treatment to mothers in the remote parts of Nuristan.

— Glen Lapp, 40, was a trained nurse from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, who had come to Afghanistan in 2008 for a limited assignment but decided to stay, serving as an executive assistant at IAM and manager of its provincial eye care program, according to the Mennonite Central Committee, a relief group based in Akron, Pennsylvania.

“Where I was, the main thing that expats can do is to be a presence in the country,” Lapp wrote in a recent report to the Mennonite group. “… Treating people with respect and with love.”

He also previously helped with medical response to hurricanes Katrina and Rita. In Afghanistan, he was responsible for organizing mobile eye camps like the Nuristan trip.

— Dr. Thomas Grams, 51, quit his dental practice in Durango, Colorado, four years ago to work full-time giving poor children free dental care in Afghanistan and Nepal. His twin brother, Tim, said Grams wasn’t trying to spread religious views.

— Dan Terry, 63, of Wisconsin came to Afghanistan in 1971. He and his wife settled here in 1980 and raised three daughters in the country. He worked with impoverished ethnic groups, trying to make connections between aid organizations and the government to improve services in remote areas.

“He had a heart for the rural areas of Afghanistan,” IAM said in a statement.

— Cheryl Beckett, the 32-year-old daughter of a Knoxville, Tennessee, pastor, had spent six years in Afghanistan and specialized in nutritional gardening and mother-child health, her family said. Beckett, who was her high school valedictorian at a Cincinnati-area high school and held a biology degree, had also spent time doing work in Honduras, Mexico, Kenya and Zimbabwe. Her job on the trip was to translate for women patients.

— Daniela Beyer, 35, of Chemnitz, Germany, was a linguist and a translator in German, English and Russian. She also spoke Dari and was learning Pashto. She worked for the IAM from 2007 to 2009 doing linguistic research and joined the eye camp so that she could translate for women patients.

— Brian Carderelli, 25, of Harrisonburg, Virginia, was a freelance videographer who worked as a public relations manager for the International School of Kabul. He was recruited by the school shortly after he graduated from James Madison University in 2009.

“Brian quickly fell in love with the Afghan people and culture,” the school said in a statement. He had hoped to stay in Afghanistan another year, said school director John Brown.

— Mahram Ali, 50, an Afghan from eastern Wardak province had worked as a watchman with NOOR eye hospital in Kabul since 2007. He guarded the team’s vehicles as they left them to trek more than 100 miles (160 kilometers) into Nuristan. He leaves behind a wife and three young children.

— Jawed, a 24-year-old Afghan from Panjshir province, was the team’s cook. He worked as a cook at a government eye hospital in Kabul and had been given time off to go with the IAM team. The organization said Jawed, who had gone on a number of similar trips with the IAM eye doctors to Nuristan, was well-loved for his sense of humor. He also helped the doctors hand out eyeglasses.