UN system condemns terrorist attack in US

The United Nations system in Kenya has condemned the terrorist attacks which centred on the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington on Tuesday. Klaus Toepfer, UN Under-Secretary-General and Director-General of the UN office in Nairobi, said in a statement on Wednesday that he offered his deepest sympathy to the families and friends of the victims of the attack. “These terrorist attacks in the United States have shocked me and they have shocked UN staff here in Kenya. These acts of barbarism occurred on American soil, but they were in fact an attack on civilisation, democracy and freedom everywhere,” he said.

The attacks brought back vivid memories of the bomb attacks on the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in 1998, in which 224 people were killed and over 4,000 injured, Toepfer added. “We here in Kenya have direct experience of the grief and misery caused by acts of thoughtless, cowardly, terrorist aggression. In the wake of those attacks in 1998, we at the UN created a Garden of Remembrance and a Peace Pole was erected to serve as a reminder to future generations.” Staff of the 23 UN agencies in Kenya would be gathering in the Garden of Remembrance for a ceremony to show sympathy for the families of the victims of the attack on Thursday morning, Toepfer said.

[see also IRIN report of 12 September headlined “United Nations condemns world’s worst terrorist attack” at: http://www.reliefweb.int/IRIN/index.phtml]