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Given how hazardous their work is, it is a wonder that it took until Monday morning for 14 Nepalese guards to be murdered as they were being driven by bus from where they lived to the Canadian embassy in Kabul.

The suicide bomber was on foot when he struck the minibus. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the attack “appalling and cowardly.”

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“Our thoughts are with the victims as we stand with the Afghan people,” Trudeau tweeted.

The deaths of these legendary fighters, who had retired from the British, Indian and Nepalese armies’ storied Gurkha regiments, will undoubtedly have a profound effect on the psyche of those few courageous Westerners still living and working in the Afghan capital.

The Nepalese are “consummate professionals — fearless warriors with the gift of self-restraint who know the value of human life,” Canada’s first ambassador to Afghanistan, Chris Alexander, said in an email Monday.