UN staff shot dead in Afghan capital
Updated on 28 October 2009
Militants storm a guest house in Kabul, killing six UN workers in a move aimed at disrupting Afghanistan's presidential election run-off in November.
The White House has condemned the attacks in Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan and expressed condolences to the victims.
The attack was the first of two which shook the capital. The second was a rocket attack aimed at the luxury Serena hotel in which more than 100 guests, including a Channel 4 News team, had to be evacuated to an underground bunker.
An increasingly resurgent Taliban have vowed to stage attacks ahead of the run-off on 7 November.
Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama weighs sending more soldiers to Afghanistan to fight an insurgency that has reached its fiercest level since 2001.
ATTACKS ON UN STAFF IN 2009
GAZA STRIP, 6 January
The shelling of civilians sheltering at UN schools in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip during an Israeli campaign of air strikes to stamp out Palestinian rocket attacks from Gaza prompts UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to call for Israel to explain the "totally unacceptable attacks". Israel blames Hamas for fighting around UN sites.
QUETTA, Pakistan, 2 February
One UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) worker is killed, and another is reported missing, after armed men attack their vehicle as they travel to work in the Pakistani city of Quetta.
DARFUR, Sudan, 10 March
Gunmen ambush UN and African Union peacekeepers in western Sudan, wounding four. The assailants open fire on the UNAMID patrol, intended to stamp out violence against cilivians, as it was returning to el-Geneina, the main town in west Darfur, close to the border with Chad.
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, 9 June
A UN worker is among five people killed as militants use guns and a truck bomb to attack the Pearl Continental hotel in Peshawar, northwestern Pakistan. The U.N., providing relief for more than 2.5 million people displaced by fighting, withdraws all but a skeleton staff from the city.
WAJID, Somalia, 16 August
Suspected Islamist insurgents storm a UN compound overnight in southern Somalia, injuring one UN security guard. U.N. guards fight back and kill three attackers.
KABUL, 18 August
Two Afghans working for the UN, one Nato service member and at least five Afghan civilians are killed as a suicide bomber rams an explosive-laden car into a Nato convoy.
DARFUR, Sudan, 29 September
One UNAMID peacekeeper is killed in an attack on a convoy carrying civilian and military personnel by armed men in El Geneina.
ISLAMABAD, 5 October
Five UN World Food Programme (WFP) staff, four Pakistanis and an Iraqi national, are killed and four others injured after a suicide bomber disguised as a paramilitary soldier walks into the WFP office after asking to use the toilet. Pakistani Taliban militants claim responsibility, saying the United Nations is a US slave.
DARFUR, Sudan, 18
October Unidentified gunmen shoot and wound three peacekeepers, two critically, from the UNAMID mission. Two UNAMID civilian staff members, abducted from their home in a West Darfur town in August, have not yet been released, the UN said.
SUDAN, 22 October
Deputy Force Commander of the UN Mission in Sudan is shot to death while on leave in his homeland. The deputy commander of the nearly 9,000-strong military force, one of the UN's largest, had joined the organisation five months before.
Source: Reuters, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
