UN staffer shot dead near Pakistan's Peshawar

I am seriously considering now........



16 Jul 2009 15:16:42 GMT
Source: Reuters
* Gunmen shoot dead a U.N. official and security guard

* UNHCR staff member also wounded, in stable condition

* U.N. refugee boss Antonio Guterres condemns attack

(Adds details, statement by U.N. refugee boss Guterres)

ISLAMABAD, July 16 (Reuters) - Gunmen shot dead a United Nations official and a security guard at a refugee camp near Pakistan's northwestern city of Peshawar on Thursday in an attack which also wounded another U.N. staff member.

Zil-e-Usman, a 59-year-old Pakistani who worked since 1984 for the U.N. High Commissioner For Refugees (UNHCR), was attacked by gunmen outside the agency's field office on the outskirts of the capital of North West Frontier Province.

"It was a kidnapping attempt," UNHCR spokeswoman Amena Ali Kamal said.

"They attacked him from different directions as he came out of our field office in Kacha Gari refugee camp and he was hit several times in the crossfire and later succumbed to his wounds in hospital."

Kamal said the guard, from a private security firm, was also killed.

U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres condemned the attack carried out by four to five gunmen, noting it was the third killing of a UNHCR staff member in Pakistan in the past six months.

The Pakistani UNHCR staff member who was wounded was in stable condition in hospital, he said in a statement.

"There is no justification for attacks on humanitarian workers dedicated to the protection and care of the most vulnerable people," said Guterres, who appealed to all armed groups to cease attacks on aid workers.

Insurgents have targeted foreign diplomats and aid workers in Peshawar before, and last month carried out a suicide bomb attack that devastated the city's top hotel and killed at least nine people, including two foreign U.N. workers.

The UNHCR is one of the agencies at the forefront of relief efforts to help more than 2 million people displaced by fighting between security forces and Taliban insurgents in the Swat valley and other parts of the northwest.

Many of the families staying at Kacha Gari hail from Pakistan's Bajaur tribal region, though the camp was originally established for Afghan refugees who had fled the conflict in their homeland. (Reporting by Kamran Haider and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore and Sugita Katyal)