Killed for being Christian

Gayle Williams worked with the poorest and most unfortunate of the children in Afghanistan, young boys and girls who had lost limbs to landmines and bombs.

She was dedicated to her task of teaching them the basic skills needed to survive in a harsh and violent land. the 34-year-old British woman was murdered while walking along a quiet, tree-lined street in Kabul on her way to work. She believed in living among the people she served, staying in a modest private house, shunning an armed escort in favour of using her own two feet. She made an easy target for the two gunmen who had been lying in wait for her. One of the men got off the motorcycle, walked up to Ms Williams and opened fire at close range.

She was already dead by the time her killers had weaved their way through the crowd at Kart-e-Char, leaving her corpse in a pool of blood."The men on the motorcycle stopped in front of the lady. They took out a gun and shot her on the spot. Then they rode off," said Daolad Khan, who was working on a building site directly opposite the murder scene. Mohammed Gul, a shopkeeper, added: "They knew what they were doing, they knew she would be there. She was hit many times on the chest and the body, no one could have lived after such an attack." Ms Williams had been in the country for two and a half years, working for a charity called Serve Afghanistan, which helps disabled children and adults to learn to live with their handicaps. A Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, declared that she had been executed "because she was working for an organisation which was preaching Christianity in Afghanistan".

Converting from Islam to Christianity is a capital offence in Afghanistan but friends and colleagues of Ms Williams stressed that while the organisation she worked for was Christian in its beliefs, she was extremely careful not to try to convert Afghans.