U.N. Pulls Staff From Baghdad Due to Security Concerns

U.N. spokeswoman in Geneva Marie Heuze said, ”We have asked Baghdad staff to come out temporarily for consultations with people from headquarters on the future of our operation.”

Heuze said some international staff would remain in northern Iraq.

U.N. officials gave no timetable for the security review nor did they say when they expect international staff to return.

The United Nations has 30 international staffers in Baghdad and around 2,000 local workers throughout Iraq, according to the Associated Press.

The U.N. pullout comes after a wave of deadly suicide attacks in Baghdad on Monday and six weeks after a similar attack on the U.N. headquarters there.

One of Monday’s attacks targeted the International Committee of the Red Cross. Several police stations in the capital were also bombed. Thirty-four people were killed in Monday’s attacks and some 220 were wounded. After the attacks, the Red Cross announced it would scale back its operations in Iraq.

“We do have to take stock and reconsider our position and take up the responsibility, the moral responsibility involved in sending people out there, or keeping a large number of Iraqi staff active in premises that have come under serious attack,” ICRC spokesman Roland Huguenin-Benjamin told the NewsHour Wednesday.

Huguenin-Benjamin said the bombing of Red Cross headquarters was an “unprecedented” attack against a “strictly neutral and humanitarian organization.”

Other humanitarian and relief organizations had reportedly scaled back operations since the Aug. 19 attack on the Baghdad headquarters of the United Nations, which killed 22 people including the top U.N. official in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello.

A recent U.N. report said the organization had failed to adequately assess and manage security for its employees in Iraq, the New York Times reported Thursday.