Afghan attack: International Red Cross halts all staff movement

Red Cross halts all staff movement after Afghan attack.

An Afghan policeman walks past a vehicle as he 
investigates the aftermath of Wednesday's suicide 
attack and gun battle at the International Red Cross 
building in Jalalabad east of Kabul, May 30, 2013. 
— Photo by AP

KABUL | 31 May 2013:: The International Committee of the Red Cross has halted all staff movement across Afghanistan and closed its office in Jalalabad which was hit by a deadly suicide and gun attack.

The two-hour assault on Tuesday, which left one Afghan guard dead, was the first time ICRC offices have been targeted in Afghanistan since the organisation began work there 26 years ago.

An International Organization for Migration (IOM) complex in Kabul came under sustained attack less than a week earlier, and the two incidents raise the prospect of a new phase in the Taliban's 12-year insurgency in which no organisation is considered off-limits.

The ICRC, with 1,800 employees nationwide, had 36 staff including six expatriates in Jalalabad, which is close to the Pakistani border and surrounded by some of Afghanistan's most unstable districts.

“All movements have been frozen throughout Afghanistan, there is not a single ICRC delegate or employee that is moving, taking the roads, today,” Jacques De Maio, ICRC's South Asia chief, said in a statement released in Geneva on Thursday.

“Our sub-delegation in Jalalabad has been closed, so we are reconnecting with the government and re-connecting with armed groups to determined what happened and why.”

Jalalabad lies on the key route from the Pakistani border region to Kabul, and it has been the scene of repeated attacks in recent years.

A message on the ICRC's Twitter page had initially said that all the organisation's activities across Afghanistan had been suspended. Read more>>>

[Courtesy: AFP & Dawn].

Taliban attacked Red Cross in Afghanistan.

Afghan insurgents attack International Red Cross in Jalalabad

Afghan security forces arrive at the site of an explosion in Jalalabad 

province, May 29, 2013. Credit: Reuters/ Parwiz

JALALABAD, Afghanistan | Wed May 29, 2013 12:09pm EDT :: (Reuters) - A suicide bomber blew himself up at the gate of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) office in the Afghan city of Jalalabad on Wednesday and two more insurgents entered the building, local officials said.

Afghan security forces were fighting the attackers inside the ICRC building, according to Ahmad Zia Abdulzai, spokesman for the governor of Nangarhar province.

Black smoke billowed out of the building after the blast at 5:30 p.m. (1300 GMT), and heavy gunfire could be heard.

A spokesman at the Geneva-based ICRC headquarters said it was in touch with the Jalalabad office, where there are six foreign members of staff and dozens of local employees.

The attack came less than a week after a band of insurgents assaulted the office of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Kabul, killing three civilians and injuring four foreign aid workers.

The ICRC's $90 million-a-year operations in Afghanistan are the group's biggest in the world. Some 1,800 ICRC staff work on projects ranging from providing orthopedic limbs to the war wounded to visiting militants in Afghan jails.

(Reporting by Rafiq Sherzad, Hamid Shalizi and Amie Ferris-Rotman, additional reporting by Tom Miles in Geneva; Editing by Mark Heinrich). [Courtesy: Reuters]