UNHCR staff member killed in border attack

Armed men killed an employee of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on Sunday in an attack on the Guinean border town of Macenta, the relief agency said. Another UNHCR worker has gone missing in the town, located 475 km southeast of the capital, Conakry. "Yet another humanitarian has been savagely killed trying to help refugees," UNHCR Deputy High Commissioner Frederick Barton said on Monday in Geneva. "We haven't even buried our three other colleagues murdered in West Timor 10 days ago, and now we have lost another friend and co-worker." Mensah Kpognon, from Togo, was shot and killed on Sunday and his house was burned when armed men crossed the border from Liberia into Macenta. Kpognon, 50, was the head of UNHCR's office in Macenta. His body was discovered after a colleague who had lost radio contact with him visited the house, accompanied by Guinean authorities. "Why are innocent, unarmed humanitarians like Mensah Kpognon - a father of four children who was simply trying to make the world a better place - being struck down in the most brutal way? How do we balance the risks involved in caring for hundreds of thousands of refugees who desperately need our help? And what more should we and the international community be doing to protect all of these good people in bad places?" UN High Commissioner for Refugees Sadako Ogata said. The aid agency asked the international community and West African countries to help secure the safety of another UNHCR employee, Sapeu Laurence Djeya, of Cote d'Ivoire, who was last seen being taken away from Macenta by armed men on Sunday. Macenta is about 40 km north of the Liberian town of Voinjama, which the Liberian government says has been embroiled in conflict between its forces and dissidents based in Guinea. Liberia and Guinea deny claims of harbouring each other's dissidents. Several Guineans are reported to have died in the Macenta attack. Kpognon was the 19th UNHCR staff member killed since the beginning of the 1990s. Several Guineans were reported killed in the Macenta attack. Kpognon was the 19th UNHCR staff member killed since the beginning of the 1990s. Two Roman Catholic priests who had been working with refugees were abducted on 6 September by armed men from Sierra Leone in an attack on another Guinean town, Pamalap.