Security around UN compound beefed up

Two days after a suicide bomber blew up his Mercedes car, killing two people and injuring 19 others near the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, more UN workers have left the country, and all roads to the building are now blocked to regular traffic. US soldiers using front-end loaders on Tuesday continued to fill large containers with dirt to block the double-divided boulevard running behind the headquarters. Barbed wire is stretched across the road another 100 metres away from the entrance. One side of the divided highway in front of the building was blocked on 19 August following a truck-bomb attack that killed 23 people, including the UN's special envoy to Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello. “Obviously we’re concerned about security. We’re in a war zone,” Kevin Kennedy, officer in charge of the UN mission in Iraq, told IRIN in Baghdad on Wednesday. “We’re concerned about it, so obviously we’re doing our best to make it better,” he added. Visitors now park their cars on the road about half a kilometre away from the building. Security guards at a gate about 400 metres from workers’ temporary offices continue to check visitors and anything they’re carrying. US troops now have several vehicles mounted with guns guarding the road and the parking area. “It’s another example that elements out to destabilize Iraq will attack anyone trying to improve conditions,” Kennedy maintained. The bomb went off shortly after 8:00 a.m. local time on Monday in a vehicle which was stopped at an Iraqi police checkpoint at the entrance of the parking lot used by national staff who work at the compound. As it was being inspected, the driver of the vehicle detonated the explosives. One policeman and the occupant of the car were killed. Two UN national staff members were injured; one is in serious condition but not with life-threatening injuries. Seventeen other people were injured, most of them Iraqi police officers. A reduced number of UN staff continue to work in temporary caravans set up behind the Canal Hotel, which housed the headquarters of the UN in Iraq before the 19 August blast. Many also live at the compound. There was no damage to the Canal Hotel, as the explosion occurred about 300 metres away from places where most people work. Meanwhile, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan underscored that the UN needed a secure environment to operate in Iraq. “We will go forward,” he said in New York on Monday. “But of course, if it continues to deteriorate, then our operations will be handicapped considerably.” Annan asked a former Finnish president and veteran of many UN missions to chair an Independent Panel on the Safety and Security of UN Personnel in Iraq following the devastating bombing of 19 August. The panel, headed by Martti Ahtisaari, will examine all relevant facts about the situation before the August attack, the circumstances of the attack itself and actions taken by different parties afterwards.