600 UN staff to be relocated after attack at Kabul headquarters - India News and Travel Times Provides India-centric and other News and Features

The United Nations is to relocate 600 staff from Afghanistan after attacks on a Kabul guest house last week. The some 600 non-essential staff will be moved for four to five weeks to more secure locations in and outside Afghanistan while the body works to find safer permanent housing, the Daily Express quoted spokesman Aleem Siddique, as saying. The majority of the UN's 1,100 international staff in Afghanistan live in Kabul, spread out among more than 90 guesthouses. The plan is to consolidate those living arrangements so staff can be better protected, Siddique said. He stressed this was not a pull-out or a scale-down in operations. About 80% of the UN's staff in Afghanistan are Afghan citizens. On October 28, gunmen wearing suicide vests, stormed a private guesthouse where dozens of UN staff lived, killing five UN workers and three Afghans. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the assault, saying they intentionally targeted UN employees working on the recent presidential election.