SUDAN: UNHCR staff member dies of wounds sustained in Yei attack

Follow @{0}NAIROBI, 29 mars 2006 (IRIN) - A staff member of the United Nations refugee agency who was shot and wounded during an attack by raiders on a UN compound in south Sudan has died, the UNHCR said on Wednesday.

Nabil Bahjat Abdulla, 48, succumbed to his injuries at Nairobi Hospital in the Kenyan capital on Tuesday. "Once again, the humanitarian community is mourning a friend and colleague who died trying to help others in a place that has already seen far too much sadness and violence," said António Guterres, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, in a statement.

Abdulla was wounded in a 15 March attack in Yei that left one guard dead and another wounded. One of the attackers was also killed. Six other UNHCR international staff in the compound at the time escaped injury.

UNHCR went into Yei in 2004 to prepare for the return of Sudanese refugees from the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Uganda. The agency said there were 350,000 refugees from south Sudan in these countries. Some four million more Sudanese are displaced within their own country. A planned repatriation movement from DRC to the Yei region due to start next week has been suspended while UNHCR reviews the situation.

Four days after the Yei attack, two UN peacekeepers were wounded in an attack by more than 100 armed men on a UN base in the Sudanese town of Yambio, near the border with DRC. The attack, on Bangladeshi peacekeepers, occurred when armed men tried to confine the blue helmets to their base in order to loot other compounds.

[Cet article ne reflète pas nécessairement les vues des Nations Unies]

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