By DPA,
Islamabad : The UN temporarily closed its offices across Pakistan Monday after a suicide bomber struck a UN World Food Programme (WFP) building in Islamabad, killing five people, including an Iraqi national, officials said.
The bomber disguised as a paramilitary soldier blew himself up inside the WFP office, located in one of the capital city’s upmarket neighbourhoods which also contains the private residence of President Asif Ali Zardari.
Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik said the attacker wearing the uniform of the Frontier Corps paramilitary force, whose soldiers are also deployed in the street, breached the security cordon when private guards allowed him to use the toilet in the WFP offices.
“Five people have been killed and six more wounded,” said Waseem Khwaja, spokesman for the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences, where the casualties were taken following the blast. Five people with multiple wounds were admitted to the medical facility.
The bodies of an Iraqi man identified as Botan Ahmed Ali and two Pakistani women were taken to the government-run hospital, and two victims succumbed to their injuries during treatment, Khwaja added.
A Pakistani WFP employee said the explosion took place at the office reception inside the perimeter walls.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon condemned the “terrorist attack” which he said was “unjustifiable.”
“It is a terrible tragedy for the United Nations and the whole humanitarian community in Pakistan,” Ban told reporters in Geneva.
“This is a heinous crime committed against those who have been working trying to assist the poor and vulnerable on the frontlines of hunger,” he said.
However, Ban said that humanitarian assistance to the Pakistani people would continue.
Amir Abdulla, deputy executive director at WFP headquarters in Rome, said the UN agency was providing vital food assistance to nearly 2 million Pakistani civilians displaced by conflict in the Swat region.
WFP also supports school meal programmes and targets food assistance at vulnerable groups of people across the country.
Within hours of the afternoon blast, the United Nations announced the temporary closure of its offices throughout Pakistan.
“We have temporarily suspended our operations in Pakistan due to the security risks to the UN staff,” said Ishrat Rizvi, national information officer for the United Nations Information Centre in Islamabad. She did not give a date for the reopening of the UN
offices.
No group claimed responsibility for the attack, but Malik put the blame on the Taliban militants who, he claimed, last week decided to strike specific targets to destabilize Pakistan.
“Our actions in Swat and Waziristan have broken their back,” Malik told reporters. “They are now like a wounded snake.”
The Pakistani military is pursuing Taliban remnants in the Swat valley after killing more than 2,000 insurgents in a sustained offensive that began in late April.
Taliban militants have intensified their bombing campaign in recent days, and Monday’s blast came during a visit by British Home Secretary Alan Johnson and Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth to Islamabad. Both politicians were unaffected.