Up to 20 U.N. staff killed in north Afghan city

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Up to 20 U.N. staff killed in north Afghan city

By Mohammad Bashir | Reuters – Fri, 1 Apr, 2011 2:46 PM EDT

MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Afghan protesters angered by the burning

of a Koran by an obscure U.S. pastor killed up to 20 U.N. staff, beheading two

foreigners, when they over-ran a compound in a normally peaceful northern city

on Friday in the worst ever attack on the U.N. in Afghanistan.

At least eight foreigners were among the dead after attackers took out security

guards, burned parts of the compound and climbed up blast walls to topple a

guard tower, said Lal Mohammad Ahmadzai, a police spokesman for the northern

region.

Five protesters were also killed and around 20 wounded.

The governor of Balkh province said insurgents had used the march as cover to

attack the compound, in a battle that raged for several hours and raises serious

questions about plans to make the city a pilot for security transfer to national

forces.

" The insurgents have taken advantage of the situation to attack the U.N.

compound, " said Governor Ata Mohammad Noor.

He told a news conference that many in the crowd of protesters had been carrying

guns. Some 27 people have already been detained over the attack, he added.

Afghan police and army, who the United Nations rely on for their first line of

defense, were apparently unable to control the crowd. German troops are also

stationed in Balkh, and the NATO-led coalition said they had received a request

for help.

" Eight foreigners were killed, and two were beheaded, " said Ahmadzai.

A United Nations spokesman confirmed employees had been killed but declined to

comment on numbers of dead or their nationalities. He said the attack would not

push the United Nations out of Afghanistan.

" We need to secure our colleagues in Mazar-i-Sharif. It's not a question of us

pulling out. The U.N. is here to stay, " said spokesman Kieran Dwyer.

Staffan De Mistura, the top U.N. diplomat in Afghanistan, has flown to

Mazar-i-Sharif to handle the situation personally.

The Russian chief of the mission in the city, Pavel Yershov, was injured in the

attack but is now in hospital, Russian state television said, quoting an embassy

spokesman.

Russia called on the Afghan government and international forces to " take all

necessary measures " to protect U.N. workers in a statement issued by the foreign

ministry after the attack.

Romania's foreign ministry said preliminary information suggested a Romanian

citizen was among the dead, and condemned the attack. US. President Barack Obama

and NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen also condemned the attack.

DEADLIEST ATTACK?

If the death toll is correct, it would make it the deadliest attack on the

United Nations in Afghanistan, and one of the worst on the organization for

years.

The worst previous attack was an insurgent assault on a guesthouse where U.N.

staff were staying in October 2009. Five employees were killed and nine others

wounded.

The two largest attacks on U.N. compounds in other countries are a 2007 bomb in

Algiers that killed 17 U.N. staff, and a 2003 attack on the Baghdad hotel that

was the U.N. headquarters there, which killed at least 22 people.

Mazar-i-Sharif has remained relatively peaceful as the insurgency gathers force

in other parts of the north, and was recently chosen as one of the first areas

for a transition of security from NATO troops to Afghan forces.

Long-standing anger over civilian casualties has been heightened by the Koran

burning and the recent publication of gruesome photographs of the body of an

unarmed Afghan teenager killed by U.S. soldiers.

The Christian preacher Terry , who after international condemnation last

year canceled a plan to burn copies of the Koran, supervised the burning of the

book in front of a crowd of about 50 people at an obscure church in Florida on

Sunday, according to his website.

The Koran burning was denounced by Karzai and Pakistani President Asif Ali

Zardari.

Thousands of demonstrators marched through western Herat city and around 200 in

Kabul to protest against the same incident, but there was no violence at either

demonstration.

(Additional reporting by Hamid Shalizi in KABUL, Writing by Emma

Graham-on; Editing by )