The murder of 10 aid workers in Afghanistan's north highlights an increasing problem of foreign insurgents flowing into the once peaceful region and has forced aid groups to reconsider their operations.

The aid community has been left reeling from one of the worst attacks on humanitarians in the country and many charities say they will have to reconsider how they work.
 
"Everyone's revising security protocol," said Laurent Saillard, director of ACBAR, an umbrella organisation for aid groups working in Afghanistan.
 
"Things are changing so quickly and we expect a deterioration in the security situation anyway because of the acceleration of the conflict.
 
"When you have an incident like this your HQ comes back and you have to think about it again," he said.
 
A nearly nine-year insurgency is claiming record casualties among civilians and foreign troops and seeping out of the Taliban's southern heartlands into parts of the north once considered relatively safe.
 
US-led NATO forces have been scaling up the fight with close to 150,000 troops in the country, and the death toll has been correspondingly high, with 426 foreign troops killed so far this year, compared with 521 across 2009.
 
The Afghanistan NGO Safety Office (ACOS) said 24 workers for aid organisations had been killed in Afghanistan since July last year, excluding UN workers or sub-contractors.
 
"I think over the past five years in particular the security situation has gone down the drain, of course that has a lot of impact on access to the field and security of NGOs (non-governmental organisations)," said Saillard.
 
Those trying to bring welfare to poor communities in the north say their task has carried greater risks since NATO opened a new supply route, which has attracted a new set of fighters.
 
"It has really aggravated in the last year, it's become horrible, some areas (close to the route) are completely inaccessible," said the head of a Western aid organisation, speaking on condition of anonymity over security fears.
 
The supply route has made the Afghan border with Tajikistan more porous, leading to an upsurge in fighting in northern Kunduz and Takhar provinces.
 
Further east in remote Badakshan province, where the bodies of five US men and three women -- an American, a German and Briton -- plus two Afghans were found on Friday, the NGO chief said security was also getting worse.
 
"We are revising our protocol and there are many indicators right now that there may be a slight aggravation of the security situation, where it was relatively calm before," he told AFP.
 
The volunteers -- seven medics and a film maker -- worked for the Christian aid group International Assistance Mission (IAM). The Taliban and militant group Hizb-e-Islami both claimed responsibility for the killings.
 
Dirk Frans, the executive director of IAM, which had previously lost four foreign workers during four decades of providing medical care in Afghanistan, said it would stay "as long as we are welcome here".
 
The head of the other Western NGO said it had an "excellent relationship" with local Taliban who were happy to see aid supplies coming to their impoverished communities. But foreign fighters were more difficult to engage.
 
"When there are people coming from outside Afghanistan, that's when the trouble starts," he said.
 
The dense forests where the IAM workers were killed and their bodies found is known to be a no-go zone for NGOs, but aid chiefs said they did not believe the deaths represented a direct threat to humanitarian work in the area.
 
"We have to wait a little bit to get the overall impact but right now I don't see (the deaths causing) a policy-based shift," said ACOS director Nic Lee, whose group provides advice on security issues.