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| Afghanistan/South Asia |
| UN worker killed in Afghan suicide bombing |
| 2005-05-09 |
| KABUL, Afghanistan - A UN engineer from Myanmar was among three people killed over the weekend when a suicide attacker walked into a Kabul Internet cafe and blew himself up, officials say, in the first fatal attack on a UN staffer in the capital since the fall of the Taleban in 2001. The bombing Saturday followed a series of kidnap attempts on foreigners and the killing of a British development worker, deepening a sense of insecurity in the city just as a Taleban-led insurgency revives in the south. The UN said it was concerned about increasing violence in Afghanistan, but a spokewoman for the world body, Ariane Quentier, said it would not curtail its activities here, including preparations for Sept. 18 parliamentary elections. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan condemned the killings and called upon the government of Afghanistan and international forces here "to take the necessary measures to address the security situation," his spokesman Farhan Hag said in New York. Afghanistan's top law-enforcer promised a thorough investigation and said police were erecting extra checkpoints around the country. "There are criminal elements who have a lot to gain by destabilizing Afghanistan and halting and reversing the progress the country has made," Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali said on Sunday. "We will never allow that to happen." The US ambassador condemned the targeting of an Internet cafe as an attack on "Afghans' desire to be part of the larger world." "The fact that this terrorist chose a place where Afghans and visitors visited to freely gather and exchange information is not surprising," Zalmay Khalilzad said. "These tyrants fear truth." Officials said witnesses recalled a man entering the Park Internet Cafe in the upscale Shahr-e-Naw district on Saturday afternoon and going straight to the restroom. The explosion occurred just after he re-emerged. Quentier identified one of the victims as an employee of the UN Office for Project Services. She said the man was a Myanmar national, but did not release his name. The man had been working on a road project in southern Afghanistan, said Gen. Nazar Mohammed Nekzad, the lead Afghan investigator. Another of the three victims appeared to be a suicide bomber, because of the severe mutilation of his body, Interior Ministry spokesman Latfullah Mashal said. The third fatality and five people wounded were Afghan customers. Police detained five people, including the owner of the cafe, for questioning. |
| Posted by:Steve White |