US Aid Worker Killed in Pakistan Ambush

An American aid worker shot dead in Peshawar yesterday is believed to be the first victim of a targeted attack on a westerner in the campaign of violence unleashed by Islamic extremists in Pakistan from summer last year.

Stephen Vance, a contractor to the US government development agency USAid, was shot dead along with his Pakistani driver just after he left home yesterday morning. He was living in Peshawar with his wife and five children. He was not in an armored car.

A US diplomat whose armored vehicle was ambushed by suspected Islamic militants in Peshawar in August was unharmed. As well as traveling in bullet-proof vehicles with bodyguards, US diplomats and USAid staff are not allowed to have their families in Pakistan. As a contractor, Vance was less well-protected.

According to reports, seven spent shells were found at the site where Vance was killed, in an upmarket part of the city known as University Town.

"People are really just in shock," said an aid official who worked alongside him. "It's very scary. We've become used to bombs but this is something different.

"What's particularly frightening is that he was just coming out of his house, to drive to work, as he must every morning."

Vance, 52, worked for CHF International, a non-governmental organization. He is thought to have moved to Peshawar this year. He worked on the $750m (about £500m) US government aid program for the tribal area, which runs alongside the Afghanistan border. His project sought to create jobs for people in the tribal belt, especially in Waziristan, where many have joined the Taliban and other extremist groups simply for the money.

Law and order has deteriorated sharply in Peshawar, the provincial capital of the North-West Frontier province, with kidnappings of local people for ransom on the rise in particular, though the violence has spread across Pakistan.

"Unfortunately, the government is not taking any solid steps to improve security. The situation is that the area around Peshawar is not safe," said Mehmood Shah, a former senior bureaucrat turned analyst.

This week a convoy of trucks carrying US military equipment and food was ambushed and ransacked as it passed through the Khyber area on its way to Afghanistan. A suicide bomb attack at a sports stadium in Peshawar on Tuesday killed at least two people, while another suicide attack yesterday, at a military camp at Shabqadar, also in the north-west, killed two soldiers.

The diplomatic community in Islamabad has been shaken by bombings in the capital. Many missions, including the British high commission and the Department for International Development, have sent families home.