An American woman working with the U.S. Army’s controversial unit of civilian social scientists embedded with troops in Afghanistan was seriously wounded when she was set afire in an apparent Taliban attack, Wired’s Danger Room blog reports.

On Tuesday, Paula Loyd, a member of the Army’s Human Terrain Team, was interviewing villagers in Maywand, in Kandahar Province, when she reportedly approached a man carrying a jug of gasoline. They started discussing the price of gas when he suddenly doused her with the fuel and set her alight.

Ms. Loyd suffered second- and third-degree burns on 60 percent of her body before her teammate submerged her in a nearby water source, extinguishing the flames. Ms. Loyd was stabilized and evacuated to the Army’s Brooke Army Medical Center, in San Antonio. She is apparently in stable but guarded condition. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.

The attack is only the latest on a member of the Human Terrain Team, which has deployed a few hundred social scientists to assist Army troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. In May, Michael Bhatia, an Oxford-trained political scientist, was killed in a roadside bomb attack in eastern Afghanistan. Two months later in Iraq, Nicole Suveges, a social scientist, was killed instantly when a bomb blast destroyed the Sadr City District Council building. —Andrew Mills