A man believed to be protesting against sanctions on Iraq opened fire at the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation's mission in Baghdad killing two people and wounding as many as seven others.
Iraqi police and FAO officials said that the unidentified gunman had walked into the building yesterday morning and opened fire in a downstairs reception area before going upstairs and continuing to shoot.
"At about 8:30 a.m. [local time] this morning, a gunman entered the FAO building in Baghdad, and a shoot-out took place. As a result, two FAO staff were killed," said a statement issued by the FAO representative in Iraq, Mr Amir Khalil.
Mr Khalil said that the seven people wounded included four Iraqi government guards and three FAO staff.
He named the dead as Yusuf Abdilleh, a Somali administrative officer and Marewan Mohammed Hassan, an Iraqi information technology worker.
Mr Khalil said one of the wounded was Mr Mohammed Farah, the FAO co-ordinator in northern Iraq who was on a mission to Baghdad. He was wounded while trying to jump out of the building. Mr Farah and the two wounded staff members are in hospital in stable condition, he added.
Separately, an FAO official in Baghdad, who asked not to be identified by name, said that the attacker said he was acting in protest of the UN sanctions imposed on Iraq for its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
The head of the FAO said in London that the attack may have been a protest against the sanctions, but that the organisation had no plans to close its office in Baghdad. "There are hungry people in Iraq and we have to continue to do our best and help those poor people to be fed appropriately," the FAO director-general, Mr Jacques Diouf, said.
Michael Jansen adds from Beirut:
Mr Denis Halliday, the former UN humanitarian co-ordinator in Baghdad who resigned in 1998 to protest against the sanctions regime, reacted to the news from Iraq with surprise and shock in Beirut, where he had been addressing a conference about the issue.
He told The Irish Times: "I believe this is certainly not intended by the government or government policy. In fact, the Iraqi government has bent backward over the years to protect the lives of UN staff . . . and we have never had any reason to fear for our lives." Mr Halliday had earlier in the week proposed alternatives to sanctions to a conference convened in Beirut by the Association of Arab-American University Graduates. He proposed the re-establishment of the UN inspection and monitoring of Iraq's weapons programme; imposition of "smart" sanctions to prevent Iraq from obtaining prohibited weaponry; an end to the "demonisation" of Iraq and dialogue with Baghdad; lifting of economic sanctions; release of equipment to repair the severely damaged oil industry; investment in the country's devastated economy; postponement of reparations payments which consume 30 per cent of gross oil revenues, and an end to the "illegal" daily bombing of Iraq which has killed 150-200 people.
He admitted that he is not "very happy" with this plan, that it is "imperfect" but he said he had drafted it in such a way as to secure the support of the parties imposing sanctions as well as those who oppose them. Mr Halliday, an Irish national who held the rank of assistant secretary general, said he designed his plan to "help Washington and London to get out of this dreadful mess they have gotten themselves into" by insisting on the continuation of the punitive sanctions regime until the Iraqi President, Mr Saddam Hussein, is no longer in power. Mr Halliday believes that the US could "be blamed ultimately for crimes against humanity, including possibly genocide.
"What I am working on now is trying to get other governments . . . to put pressure on Washington to change its policy. For, in much of the world there is outrage amongst many parliamentarians over the continuation of economic sanctions." He believes the efforts of these parliamentarians could reinforce the position of the 70 "courageous" US Congressmen who have taken a stand against sanctions. These lawmakers have come to realise that the "human calamity" caused by sanctions "is not serving the best interests of the USA, or Europe". The sweeping embargo is "illegal", he asserted. "What is happening in Iraq is a complete breach of international humanitarian law." It amounts to punishing "a people in order to get at their ruler.
"So, today 18 months after leaving Iraq and resigning from UN, I find myself advocating that those countries of the UN, small, neutral and with some integrity still remaining . . . work together to form an informal coalition both inside and outside of the Security Council for an end to the killing in Iraq. Member states of the General Assembly have got to take back the UN from an undemocratic and corrupted Security Council" dominated by "self-serving and vetowielding permanent powers . . . The UN is in very bad shape. More discredited now than ever before in its history".
He said "I have been harassing my own government in Dublin" to assume a role in the campaign to end sanctions on Iraq and restore the UN role.