UN raises alert level in Pakistan, orders children of staff to leave
ISLAMABAD - The United Nations said yesterday it has ordered children of its international staff to leave Pakistan after raising its security level following last month's suicide attack on the Marriott Hotel in the capital.
The alert came as a suicide bomber killed himself and three other people yesterday in northwest Pakistan in an attack aimed at a prominent ethnic Pashtun politician, police said.
The politician, Asfandyar Wali Khan, leader of the liberal-leaning Awami National Party, or ANP, that is part of the ruling coalition government, was not hurt in the attack in the town of Charsadda, police said.
The blast, the latest in a wave of bomb attacks by Islamist militants, came as the United Nations said it was raising its alert level to "security phase III" - under which children of international staff, and possibly their spouses, would have to leave the country.
"[A] number of security incidents in the recent past, including the bombing of the Marriott Hotel, have drawn attention to the prevailing security situation in the country and the potential risks to the international and national communities," the United Nations said in a statement.
The heightened security level applied to Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Quetta, and nine districts of Baluchistan, it said.
A UN information officer in Islamabad, Ishrat Rizvi, said the world body remained committed to Pakistan. She added that the evacuation of children "doesn't make any difference to the work of the United Nations."
The former head of UN security resigned earlier this year after an inquiry faulted his department for ignoring repeated internal requests to raise the security level in Algeria ahead of a December 2007 bomb attack that killed 17 UN employees.
A suicide truck bomber attacked the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad Sept. 20, killing 55 people, among them six foreigners including the Czech ambassador and three Americans.
Britain's Foreign Office said Wednesday it was withdrawing the children of its diplomats in Pakistan. Aid groups and some other embassies and foreign companies are expected to follow suit by asking dependents of their international staff to leave.
The Pakistani government had issued assurances about efforts to protect foreigners after the Marriott attack but unease over security has grown. 