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Miriam Lindsay was from Maple Grove, Que.Facebook/Handout

A Canadian aid worker was killed in a car crash in Afghanistan’s capital Kabul on Thursday night.

Her family and the Canadian embassy in Kabul have been informed.

Miriam Lindsay, 41, from Maple Grove, Que., was on her way home around midnight local time when her car was hit by another vehicle.

An Afghan man in the car also died. Two other male passengers were injured.

Ms. Lindsay had been working for the Afghan aid agency Youth Health and Development Organization (YHDO) and had been living in Afghanistan for more than three years.

“I was informed about the accident at 4 a.m. and contacted her family immediately via text message,” said YHDO executive director Abdul Rasheed, whose team went to Isteqlal Hospital in West Kabul to identify Ms. Lindsay. Dr. Rasheed has since spoken to the family on the phone.

The bodies of Ms. Lindsay and the male victim have since been taken to Kabul’s forensic-medicine hospital for examination.

“She was kind and loved the Afghan people and always stood up for them,” said Dr. Rasheed of Ms. Lindsay, who worked as a technical manager for the organization. “She was very much in touch with our culture and strongly believed in humanitarian principles. She had a good life in Canada but continued to choose to work here in Afghanistan,” he said.

Dr. Rasheed said arrangements for repatriation through the Canadian embassy are being made.

According to her sisters Kim and Iris, Ms. Lindsay was courageous, loving and brilliant. She began her career as a humanitarian in Bolivia after studying agriculture. A keen sense of organization and the ability to learn quickly helped her travel the world to countries like Angola, Yemen and Afghanistan, always helping marginalized and downtrodden people on her journeys, they said.

“We’ll remember her as someone who gave her life to help people where the need was greater," Iris said. "She believed in the work she was doing to help those who needed it most.”

Ms. Lindsay often worked in countries considered dangerous. In 2017, she survived a bombing in Kabul that killed 90 people and wounded more than 450 others. She was in a nearby store when the blast rang out, shattering the door and windows of the shop.

“Living here is dangerous,” she told Radio-Canada in the hours after the attack. “We know, so we accept some risks. Is it lack of awareness, or devotion? I do not know.”

Ms. Lindsay was due to fly home next week to visit her family, and last Saturday had posted a photo of her hometown on Facebook, captioning it, “My village. Just can’t wait to be there.” Her sister Kim was going to pick her up at the airport.

“She loved being surrounded by people,” Kim said through tears. “She was versatile and able to adapt. … At the same time she was very fragile with a very big heart. But she was an impressive person, a complex person.”

With a report from Matthew Lapierre in Toronto.

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