Foreigner among 5 perish in UN office suicide blast

Updated at: 1510 PST, Monday, October 05, 2009
ISLAMABAD: Five people including two women and a foreigner and four injured in a bomb blast at UN’s World Food Programme office, said Senior Superintendent Police, Tahir Alam Khan, here at WFP office while talking to journalists.

The SSP said the dead included Mrs. Gul Mukhtar, who was a receptionist, Mrs. Farzana Barkat, an Assistant at WFP and a foreigner Boton Ali, an Iraqi national.

He said the security arrangements were satisfactory at WFP office but said, “It was a well planned blast”. He added that the nature of blast still could not be confirmed. Tahir Alam said the bomb blast occurred at the office near reception at 12noon.

“We are getting the list of employees and visitors to investigate everything properly and relief activities are underway,” he said.

The SSP said that as many as 100 employees work in the office, adding that all died and injured persons were shifted to hospital.

To a question whether it was a parcel bomb, he said that “We are still in process of investigation and every thing would be checked properly.”

Interior minister Rehman Malik also confirmed four Pakistanis and one Iraqi national were killed Monday in a suicide blast inside a United Nations office in the heart of the capital Islamabad.

"According to the latest reports, five people have been martyred -- one of them is an Iraqi national. Four people have been injured, all of them are Pakistanis," Interior Minister Rehman Malik told reporters.

Initially, police had already confirmed that two Pakistani women and one Iraqi man, all staff members of the World Food Programme, had died in the blast.

Interior Minister also constituted a joint investigation team, headed by DIG police, for determination of responsible culprits who carried out blasts.

The blast raises questions as to how the bomber managed to evade tight security at the heavily fortified offices of the World Food Program. It could also hamper the work of WFP and other aid agencies assisting Pakistanis displaced by army offensives against al-Qaida and the Taliban in their strongholds close to the Afghan border.

The blast Monday shattered windows in the lobby of the compound in an up market residential area of Islamabad and left victims lying on the ground in pools of blood, witnesses said.

“There was a huge bang and something hit me. I fell on the floor bleeding,'' said Adam Motiwala, an information officer at the U.N. agency who was hospitalized with injuries to his head, leg and ribs.

Police official Bin Yamin said the attacker, who was between 22and 26 years old, detonated his explosives in the lobby, killing three people, including an Iraqi working for the WFP. The two other dead were Pakistani women. Several others were injured, two of them critically, the WFP said in a statement.

“This is a terrible tragedy for WFP, and for the whole humanitarian community in Pakistan,'' said WFP Deputy Executive Director, Amir Abdulla, speaking from the agency's headquarters in Rome.


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By Kamran Haider

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - A suicide bomber dressed as a paramilitary soldier attacked an office of the U.N. World Food Program (WFP) in the Pakistani capital on Monday killing five people and wounding several, officials said.

Pakistan is battling Islamist militants who have set off numerous bombs in towns and cities aimed at the security forces and government and foreign targets.

"I went to my office on the first floor and as I sat on my chair there was a huge blast," WFP official Arshad Jadoon told Reuters outside the tightly guarded office in a residential area of Islamabad.

"All of a sudden, a smoke cloud enveloped the building and we came out where wounded people were lying," Jadoon said.

Officials at city hospitals said five people had been killed.

The blast led to a brief spate of selling at Pakistan's main stock market.

"There was slight profit-taking immediately after the news broke but the market quickly recovered," said Sajid Bhanji, a dealer at brokers Arif Habib Ltd.

Police said one foreigner, an Iraqi, was among the dead while the WFP said three of its staff had been killed and several wounded.

The United Nations temporarily closed its office in Pakistan after the blast for security reasons, a U.N. spokeswoman said.

Two foreign U.N. workers were killed in a suicide car bomb attack on a hotel in the northwestern city of Peshawar in June.

The army has made progress against militants in the northwest and Interior Minister Rehman Malik says the back of the Pakistani Taliban has been broken.

But the militants have struck back with several bomb attacks in recent days as the army prepares to launch an offensive on the Pakistani Taliban's main bastion in the South Waziristan region on the Afghan border.

The bomber was disguised as a paramilitary soldier and got into the WFP compound after asking a guard at the gate if he could use a toilet, Malik told reporters at the scene.

"They are like a wounded snake," Malik said. "We expected they would attack some specific places to put the government under pressure."

MORE BOMBS EXPECTED

Captured militants had told interrogators some bombers had been sent off on missions last month, Mali said. "So in coming days, two or three suicide bombings are expected," he said.

Malik said the bombers were trying to destabilize the country but the nation was united against them.

"In a matter of a few days we'll take action against them as we took in Swat, Bajaur and Mohmand," Malik said, referring to three northwestern areas where the security forces have attacked and pushed back the militants. He did not elaborate.

The WFP provides food to millions of impoverished Pakistanis.

The agency was recently involved in providing relief to about 2 million people displaced by an army offensive against militants in the Swat valley.

"This is a terrible tragedy for WFP, and for the whole humanitarian community in Pakistan," said WFP Deputy Executive Director Amir Abdulla, speaking from agency headquarters in Rome.

There was no claim of responsibility for Monday's attack on the WFP office, which is several hundreds meters (yards) from the Islamabad home of President Asif Ali Zardari.

Zardari moved into the official presidential residence soon after his election last year for security reasons. (Additional reporting by Zeeshan Haider and Sahar Ahmed; Writing by Robert Birsel; Editing by Jerry Norton)