GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Three staff members died and two others were injured when a suicide bomb went off at the UNHCR (UN High Commissioner for Refugees) head office in Kandahar, Afghanistan about 08:00 Monday morning 31 October.The Geneva-based agency says the functioning of its office in Kandahar has been seriously disrupted.
The agency has “facilitated the return of millions of refugees” since it began working in the country in 1980, it says.
“‘This is a tragedy for UNHCR and for the families of the dead and wounded. It also underscores the great risks for humanitarian workers in
Afghanistan,” says High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres. “I am hugely saddened. All of us at UNHCR stand in solidarity with
the families of those who have died or been injured.”
The UNHCR was still trying to learn more about the circumstances surrounding the attack, it said Monday afternoon.
Special envoy Joli can help draw attention to “some of the world’s most difficult refugee situations”
UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie at the annual meeting of the refugee agency's governing body.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Actress Angelina Jolie was asked Tuesday 4 October by the head of the UN refugee organization UNHCR to take on a new role as special envoy, in the wake of several new emergency refugee situations this year.
The invitation was extended by High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres, who recognized her 10 years of service with the agency by asking her to take on an expanded role in some of the world’s most difficult refugee situations.
His request came just as news reports began to flow in of a bomb blast in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia. Seventy people were reportedly killed and 150 injured, according to Somalia’s President Sharif Sheikh Ahmedhe.
Al-Shabab, which is fighting the government, took responsibility for the suicide bomb. The news is the latest evidence of the rising level of violence in the country, from which people are fleeing in growing numbers.
The Dabaad camps in Kenya, across the border from Somalia, now have nearly half a million people, with 1,000 arriving daily. Some 200,000 Somalis have fled to these camps in the past four months.
UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie at the annual meeting of the refugee agency's governing body.
Jolie is in Geneva for the annual meeting of UNHCR’s executive committee, which oversees funding for the organization and its projects.
She has become one of the best-known goodwill ambassadors for a UN agency, through her regular and frequent visits, on average four a year, to refugee camps around the world, including some in very remote regions. She took on the ambassadorial role in August 2001.
“Today, three-quarters of a million people are at risk of death in the next four months in the Horn of Africa,” she told the executive committee. “The work we are doing needs to scale up to meet the needs of these individuals. How we continue to respond to this period of malnutrition and famine is going to define the work of those NGOs, governments, and international organizations working in the Horn of Africa. It will, quite starkly, determine whether a huge number of people live or die.”
Monday Jolie shared the spotlight with Nasser Salim Ali Al-Hamairy, founder of Yemen’s Society for Humanitarian Solidarity: she co-presented with Guterres the 2011 Nansen Refugee Award, given to the SHS. The prize, widely considered the refugee world’s highest honour, was awarded to the founder and the 290 staff of SHS, a non-governmental organization, for their life-saving work in helping thousands of refugees and migrants who arrive on Yemen’s shores each year.
The staff comb the Yemeni coastline year round, pulling people from the sea and helping them find safety and assistance.
Update 2, 23 July GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Government offices in the centre of Oslo appear to have been the target of at least one bomb that went off Friday afternoon 22 July at 15:6, killing seven people and injuring several more, officials have confirmed. Shortly afterwards, a gunman attacked a political youth camp on an island near the city, killing 80 people there. No group has claimed the attack. See main story on GenevaLunch.
Links to other sites: BBC, Reuters and The Foreigner (Norway)
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Swiss Foreign Affairs Department Sunday confirmed to Swiss media that two men missing after an explosion at a cafe in Marrakesh, Morocco last Thursday were killed by the blast. Moroccan authorities were unable to identify the bodies until Sunday.
The two, ages 23 and 25, had been sitting at the cafe with two women friends, ages 25 and 27, who were brought back to Switzerland by Rega Saturday and immediately hospitalized. Both are in critical condition.
The four were all from canton Ticino, although the 23-year-old man was Portuguese and the other man was Swiss, as are the two women.
They were in Marrakesh as tourists.
The explosion, which is still under investigation, killed 16 people, 13 of whom were tourists. In addition to the two Swiss, the Moroccan interior ministry announced that the group includes eight French citizens, three Moroccans, a Canadian, a British citizen and a Dutch person.
Another two dozen people were injured.
Hundreds of Moroccans turned out for a peaceful protest in Marrakesh Sunday, with some demanding a more rapid transition to democracy, according to several media sources with reporters on the scene. Other Moroccans are concerned about the loss of tourism, an important source of income.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Unconfirmed reports by hospitals to media groups indicate that six French tourists may be among the dead after an apparent bomb blast at a popular cafe in Marrakesh, Morocco Thursday noon 28 April, and that two Swiss may be among the 20 or more persons injured.
TSR television says the Swiss government could not confirm the news Thursday evening.
The death toll has now risen to 15. Earlier story, GenevaLunch
A huge blast Thursday 28 April at the popular Argana two-storey cafe in Marrakech’s Place Jamaâ El Fna, a Unesco World Heritage site, killed 14 people and injured another 20, according to initial figures released by the Moroccan government. Reuters says it was told initially that gas cannisters might have caused the lunchtime blast, but officials now appear to be giving more weight to the possibility that it was the work of Islamists.
Foreigners are reportedly among those killed, but officials had not yet confirmed this early Thursday evening.
Morocco has been relatively untroubled by terrorism since a bomb killed 45 people in 2003, but it has suffered by a drop in tourism, a key industry, from the global economic recession.
Links to other sites: AP/The Australian, The Independent, Reuters
125 reported injured, 22 of them in critical condition, according to Russian news services
An explosion that the Belarus KGB security services say was a bomb planted under a bench rocked a city centre metro station in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, Monday evening 11 April, killing 11 people and injuring at least 125 others. The president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, says he will not rule out terorist help from abroad, but social network chatter about the explosion is reportedly suggesting the possibility of an internal security services feud in this country where Lukashenko has ruled with a heavy hand since 1994.
Elections in late 2010 were heavily criticized by the European Union, which imposed a travel ban on the president and officials in his regime.
The blast occurred shortly before 18:00, during rush hour, at “Oktyabrskaya, the only interchange station of the capital’s subway system and the city’s busiest. The station is also near the offices of President Alexander Lukashenko,” according to Russian news agency Ria Novosti.
The explosion brings to mind the metro bombing in Moscow in 2010, but The Independent points out that “the country has a heavy security presence and is not an obvious target for terrorists aiming to attack civilians. Unlike in neighbouring Russia, where two suicide bombers from the country’s mainly Muslim North Caucasus region hit the metro system last year, there is no history of Islamic insurgency in Belarus, while the pro-Western opposition forces would be unlikely to target civilians.”
Links to other sites: The Independent, Moscow Times, Reuters, Ria Novosti
The Russian government siad 29 January it has identified the suicide bomber who killed 35 people and injured 180: a 20-year-old man from the Caucasus region. It also issued a photo of Vitaly Razdobudko, 32, who is suspected of being the mastermind behind the blast. He is wanted in connection with a number of other attacks in the recent months. Moscow Times reports that he “is a Russian-born adherent of the fundamentalist Wahhabi branch of Islam, which is popular among terrorists, a law enforcement source told RIA-Novosti.”
Link to Ria Novosti, which carries several new articles on the people behind the bomb, which Russian authorities now say was clearly aimed at foreigners.
Initial reports government staying at hotel were wrong
Post Hotel, Davos, Switzerland, Thursday morning 27 January: a sculpture by artist Ram Sutarn, 84, of India stands in front of the hotel. (photo, ©2011, World Economic Forum swiss-image.ch/Photo by Andy Mettler
Davos, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Details are unverified and sketchy, but the Swiss free newspaper 20 Minutes has reported that an explosion occurred Thursday morning 27 January in the Hotel de la Poste in Davos and that anti-WEF groups sent an e-mail claiming responsibility and saying a second bomb could go off. Police in Davos state they cannot say what caused the minor explosion but that there have been no injuries.
The hotel houses a group from bank UBS who are attending the World Economic Forum, including Chairman Oswald Gruebel. 20 Minutes initially reported that members of the Swiss Federal Council were in the hotel, but they are staying at another one owned by the same company.
The group, in its e-mail to 20 Minutes, makes it clear it was targeting UBS and the Swiss government.
According to 20 Minutes, the authors of the bomb say it was scheduled to go off at 06:00 to spare employees. It went off at 009:00.
A bomb that went off as Christian church-goers left a New Year’s service Saturday 31 December in Alexandria, Egypt, killed 17 people and possibly more, while injuring dozens, Egyptian interior ministry officials say. Initial reports said that a car bomb was responsible for the blast, and the number of dead listed was higher, but conflicting reports are now citing foreign ministry officials, with one version saying that the explosion was probably the work of a suicide bomber who died along with his victims. Egypt has a majority of Muslims but 10 percent of the population is Christian, according to Reuters. The blast was followed by thousands of Christians taking to the streets in protest.
Links to other sites: Al Jazeera, Jerusalem Post, Reuters
Swiss Embassy, Rome, Italy (GenevaLunch) - A parcel bomb exploded while it was being handled by an employee at the Swiss embassy in Rome, according to reports by TSR, Swiss public television. The injured employee has been transported to hospital and is reported to be in danger of losing both hands.
Link to other site: TSR
US Justice officials say Faisal Shahzad, who was arrested Monday 3 May, has admitted to planting an explosive device in a car in Times Square, and told them he was trained in Pakistan. He was arrested in New York after the Emirates flight to Dubai that he was on was asked to turn around and return as it taxied down the runway for takeoff. Shahzad’s name had been on a no-fly list but he had managed to order his ticket while en route to the airport, pay cash for it, make it through JFK Airport security and board the plane. Customs officials found his name on the boarding list shortly before takeoff and turned the plane around. A Justice Department official says there was never any danger he would have left the country, however.
He will be charged with terrorism across national borders, according to the Justice Department.
Links to other sites: US Justice Department and BBC, New York Times
US federal agents and police have taken a man into custody in relation to the attempted bombing of Times Square in New York City 2 May. Faizal Shahzad, a 30-year-old naturalized US citizen originally from Pakistan, was boarding a plane for Dubai when he was arrested. He recently returned from a trip to Pakistan, and a US Justice Department official said in an announcement that they had “gathered significant additional evidence”, which led to his arrest. The charges were not revealed. The man had recently paid cash for the Nissan Pathfinder that was used in the failed attack.
Links to other sites: New York Times, US Justice Department
Police in New York City have issued video footage showing a white male in his 40s who could be a suspect in what was apparently a bomb attack on Times Square Saturday. A t-shirt vendor alerted a police officer when he spotted smoke coming from a Nissan Pathfinder. It was found to have three propane tanks weighing 15 -17 pounds, of a kind often used for home barbecues. “One of the tanks had more M-88 firecrackers attached to the side,” reports CNN, “some of which detonated inside the vehicle.”
The rigged vehicle, discovered Saturday night in one of the city’s busiest areas, prompted a large-scale evacuation.
Links to other sites: CNN, New York Times
Two bombs have killed 49 people, unofficial sources report, with the death toll rising as many of the scores of injured are in critical condition, in Lahore Pakistan. It is unclear if the blasts were two suicide bombs or one, followed by a remote-control device exploding in the heart of Lahore’s commercial centre. One bomb went off in a crowded market, where shops and motorcycles quickly caught fire, and the other near a bank, late Monday 7 December.
Update 18:10 Syrian Interior Minister Said Mohammad Sammour has said on Syrian state television that there was no bomb and that the explosion was due to overinflated tires on the bus, Al-Jazeera reports. He categorically denied that the incident was terrorist-related.
A bomb has gone off in the centre of Damascus, Syria, Thursday morning 3 December, killing several people. The number of dead has not yet been confirmed by Syrian authorities, but the country’s interior minister, Said Mohammad Sammour, told a Lebanese TV station that it appears to have targeted Iranian pilgrims. Initial media reports indicate that 12 people may have died.
A developer who wants to put a nightclub on the grounds of the former the Sari Club in Bali is causing an outcry in Australia: 88 of the 202 people, many of them tourists, who died in the 2002 bomb attack on the club and a bar across the street, were Australian. An Australian-Bali project called Bali Peace Park Association has been trying to build a park on the grounds but the Bali government has not given them tax-free charitable status and the group has had trouble raising enough money so the lot remains empty, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
Three small bombs exploded in tourist areas of Palma, the capital of Spanish island Mallorca the afternoon of 9 August. No one was hurt, and one of the explosions may have been a controlled explosion detonated by police, according to Spanish media. Hours earlier, ETA, the Basque separatist group, claimed responsibility for an earlier bomb attack in Burgos, northern Spain 29 July and one in Palmanova, Mallorca, a day later which killed two guardia civil paramilitary police officers. In Palma 9 August, central areas were cordoned off and airport security was heightened. The Spanish royal family is vacationing on Mallorca. BBC, CNN, El Mundo (Spa)
Updated 10:15 Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Two UN employees were killed Tuesday night 9 June in a bomb blast that killed 16 and demolished the five-star Hotel Pearl Continental in Peshawar, capital of Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) in Pakistan. One, a UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) employee from Serbia, was on mission in Peshawar. Aleksandar Vorkapic, an information technology specialist in the UNHCR office in Belgrade was on his first emergency mission for the organization, the UNHCR office in Geneva announced Wednesday morning. He leaves a wife and three children.
The other death, a woman who is a Philippines citizen, was working for the World Food Programme, a spokesperson at the UNHCR office in Peshawar has told GenevaLunch. Several other UNHCR employees who were staying at the Pearl Continental Hotel have been evacuated to Islamabad, the spokesperson says. The Geneva office of UNHCR cites news reports as saying a Unicef staff person has died.
Updated 15:45 Ed. note: the number of deaths is rising and is now reported to be 23. A “powerful bomb” exploded in the centre of Lahore, Pakistan’s business centre Wednesday 27 May, killing 15 people and shearing the fronts off of several buildings in the area. The blast appears to have been set off by a suicide bomber but CNN reports that it was a well-coordinated attack with gunmen involved as well. The target was a police station with some 200 people inside and the building was demolished. Lahore was the target of bombs in March 2009, for which the Taliban claimed responsibility. BBC, CNN
A bomb exploded as VIPS were leaving a peace conference in western Baghdad when a bomb went off, killing at least 33 people and injuring another 46, reports the BBC. It is the third deadly attack since 5 March, with the other two killing 40 people.
