Wednesday, June 19, 2013
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is “shocked” at the news of an attack on a UN compound in Somalia on Wednesday, his spokesman said.
“The Secretary-General is aware of the attack against the United Nations in Somalia, and he is shocked by it,” Martin Nesirky, the spokesman, said in an e-mail. “He is being updated regularly as we get more information from Mogadishu and UN Headquarters in New York.”
Ban is currently on a visit to China for talks with the country’s leaders. Earlier Wednesday he held talks with Chinese president Xi Jinping.
Three foreigners and at least two Somali security guards were killed during the attack by Islamist insurgents in Mogadishu, UN sources said.
One UN staff member and two contractors as well as at least two Somalis guarding the fortified compound died, the sources said, taking the toll killed — excluding attackers — to at least eight. The nationalities of the foreigners could not be immediately confirmed.
