Bloodshed drives more aid workers out of Iraq

The United Nations pulled staff out of Baghdad yesterday as international aid agencies debated whether they could continue operating in the face of a wave of suicide bomb attacks and persistent lawlessness.

A UN spokeswoman in Geneva said foreign staff in Baghdad were leaving Iraq - temporarily at least - for talks on security, following Monday's bomb attack on the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) which killed 12 people.

"We have asked Baghdad staff to come out temporarily for consultations with people from headquarters on the future of our operation," UN spokeswoman Marie Heuze said.

She said the talks would focus on the security arrangements that "we would need to take to operate in Iraq".

Most foreign staff had already been pulled out following a suicide truck bomb attack on the UN headquarters in Baghdad in August which killed 22 people, including head of mission Sergio Vieira de Mello. Since then, UN programmes have been run mostly by Iraqi staff.

A UN spokesman in New York said there were about 60 international staff in Iraq, with most of them in the north and about a dozen in Baghdad. Staff in the generally calmer north were not being withdrawn, the world body said.

The ICRC is also reducing its presence. It announced on Wednesday it was pulling out some foreign staff following Monday's bombing but would not cease operating in the country.

ICRC spokeswoman Nada Doumani said yesterday that foreign Red Cross officials in Iraq would hold talks outside the country at the weekend to discuss how to reduce staff. But she insisted that there would be no general evacuation from Iraq.

"We have seen plenty of signs of solidarity since the bombing," Ms Doumani said. "Families of detainees, contractors and hospitals that we work with have been coming to our headquarters to plead with us to stay in Iraq."

Iraq's police chief appealed to foreign aid agencies not to evacuate despite the dangers of working in Iraq.

"I send a message to the humanitarian agencies that work in Iraq to keep up their work," Ahmad Ibrahim told reporters. "Don't cave in to these criminal acts."

A fresh blast shook the Iraqi capital yesterday evening, killing at least one Iraqi and setting several buildings ablaze in the city's old quarter. But a US Army spokesman said the blast was caused by a propane gas explosion rather than a bomb.