A midwife has been stabbed to death in Afghanistan, police and local media said, becoming the latest female medical worker to be killed in a country with a desperate shortage of trained women.
Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers have banned women from almost all work outside the home, and female medics are among the only women allowed to go out to work – putting them at added risk because they are so visible.
The woman was reportedly from Tajikistan originally, but had worked on the maternity ward of a hospital in northern Afghanistan for nearly 10 years. It’s not clear whether her killing was related to her work — the Taliban say they have begun an investigation into her death, but provided no further details about the case.
Local police said she was killed on her way home from work, though some reports said it happened at her home.
Last year, a hospital worker in Afghanistan told Rukhshana she had been abducted and raped on her way home from work, an attack she believed was motivated by her job.
And in 2021, just before the Taliban retook power, three women health workers were murdered as they vaccinated children against polio.
