Iran Press/ Asia: A Japanese doctor whose long career was dedicated to helping some of Afghanistan’s poorest people was among six people killed on Wednesday in an attack in the east of the country.
Tetsu Nakamura, 73, was the head of Peace Japan Medical Services — known as Peshawar Kai in Japanese — and had been working in the region since the 1980s when he began treating patients with leprosy in Peshawar in neighboring Pakistan, Japan Times reported.
The armed assault in Jalalabad city, the capital of Nangarhar province, was the second deadly incident involving aid workers in recent days and prompted an appalled reaction in Afghanistan and internationally.
A spokesman for Afghan President Ashraf Ghani called Nakamura “one of the closest friends of Afghanistan”.
He “dedicated his life to helping and cooperating with our people”, spokesman Sediq Seddiqi said.
Nakamura, had worked in the eastern Nangarhar province for over a decade, taking the lead in water projects in rural areas, which earned him the nickname "Uncle Murad" for his services to the people.
Nakamura was credited with changing a vast desert stretch in Nangarhar known as Gamber to lush forests and productive wheat farmlands.
Attaullah Khogyani, a spokesman for Nangarhar’s governor, said Nakamura, who had been shot in the chest, was in the process of being transferred to a hospital in Bagram near Kabul when he died.
The attack comes as humanitarian groups are on high alert just days after a UN aid worker was killed in a bombing in Kabul.
Five Afghans were also killed: three of Nakamura’s security guards, a driver and another colleague, Khogyani said.
Hundreds of Afghans posted photographs of Nakamura on their social media pages, condemning the killing and underscoring how respected the Japanese physician was.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, the second in as many weeks targeting aid workers in Afghanistan.
Nangarhar police said they were searching for the attackers, who fled the scene, and that an investigation was underway.
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