UNITED NATIONS -- The United Nations on Thursday reported its first peacekeeper death in Central African Republic since it took over the duties of trying to calm months of unprecedented violence between Christians and Muslims.
The peacekeeper died in a crash after a U.N. convoy was attacked in the capital, Bangui, said Vannina Maestracci, a spokesman for the U.N. secretary-general. The head of the U.N. mission, Lt. Gen. Babacar Gaye, said in a statement that another peacekeeper was severely wounded and seven slightly injured.
Gaye strongly condemned the Thursday evening ambush. There was no information yet on the attackers, and the nationalities of the peacekeepers were being withheld until families could be notified.
The news came shortly after commanders of the various U.N. peacekeeping missions gathered at United Nations headquarters for a Security Council meeting on how to deal with increasing violence and other challenges.
Both diplomats and mission commanders at the Security Council meeting expressed concern about the rising threat to the record number of 130,000 peacekeepers around the world -- and, in turn, the people they are there to help. The U.N. says 102 peacekeepers died in 2013, 36 from direct attacks and others from accidents and illnesses.
"If missions are unable to protect themselves, they will be unable to protect others," British Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant said. He pointed out that peacekeepers are increasingly challenged by nonstate entities like terrorist groups.
A Section on 10/10/2014