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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

AFGHANISTAN: First attack on aid community inside the capital

KABUL, 6 November 2003 (IRIN) - Following a bomb attack on the Kabul office of the international aid agency, Save the Children one day earlier, the agency told IRIN on Thursday that the incident had not produced any casualties and that they would continue their programme work in the capital.

"The staff went home yesterday [right after the bomb blast] and came back to the office today, we had a staff meeting and they said they wanted to continue working," Lisa Laumann, Save the Children director in Afghanistan said.

The bomb went off directly outside the Save the Children office, not far from Oxfam's base at 10:50 local time (06:20 GMT). According to Laumann, the force of the blast was directed away from the office and there was no major damage to the building apart from glass broken. "There seems to be no fragments or containers of the explosives, there was nothing visible to ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] demolition engineers," Laumann added.

There have been numerous and continuous attacks against the aid community in recent months throughout the country, but Wednesday's Kabul bomb blast is the first direct attack on the aid community in Kabul according to the Afghan NGO Security Office(ANSO).

"The incident is under investigation, however it indicates it was an attack against the humanitarian NGO community and this is an attack that we have been waiting for inside Kabul," Nick Downie, a security coordinator for the central region for ANSO told IRIN.

The blast took place while a 15-member UN delegation composed of Security Council ambassadors was in the capital Kabul, assessing, among other things, security and a possible ISAF expansion outside the capital. "The NGO community presented security concerns to UN Security Council [members] and it was a particularly significant that this blast occurred during their visit. It will send a message to the Security Council and to the international community on the security situation of Afghanistan," Downie highlighted.

Theme(s): (IRIN) Conflict

[ENDS]

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