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Taleban considered us sisters: US volunteers

Two female United States aid workers rescued from an Afghan prison said their Taleban captors had professed brotherly love and offered to lay down their lives for their American 'sisters'.

Heather Mercer and Dayna Curry were among the eight aid workers rescued from the country. The Taleban arrested the two women last August on charges of preaching Christianity, SADA reports.

Mercer and Curry were addressing journalists at the American Centre in Islamabad on Friday. They showered gratitude on Jesus, the international community, the US government, the media, and their families.

The two worked for the charitable organisation Shelter Now International.

The other six aid workers rescued include four Germans and two Australians.

While earlier reports said an American special operations group had rescued them, Curry emphasised it was a Northern Alliance commander who had stormed the prison at Ghazni.

The Taleban had moved the workers to the Ghazni prison from Kabul after the capital fell to the Northern Alliance. Curry said the doors of their prison were broken down to let the inmates out.

The first thing the women reportedly did was discarding the burqa veils they were forced to wear under the Taleban regime.

Special American forces had then flown the workers to Islamabad.

"Even Hollywood couldn't have staged a better rescue operation," Mercer said.

The two women said most of the charges the Taleban had levelled against them were false.

Curry said though they had a book and movie on Jesus, they were not trying to preach Christianity.

Even the Afghan detainees in prison were reportedly praying for the US to come to their rescue. And the first thing the male inmates did was shave off the beards they were forced to sport under the Taleban regime.

"I still can't believe we emerged out of the ordeal alive and totally unharmed," Curry said.

Indo-Asian News Service

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