UN Casualties

Afghan ‘friendly fire killed UN worker’, Edith M Lederer, The Age, 17 April 2010

Friendly fire from Afghan security forces may have killed a UN employee during a Taliban attack in October on a guest house filled with UN staff, the United Nations said Friday. Five UN staff members and three Afghans were killed in the attack.

Germany’s Stern magazine reported on its website on Friday that it obtained amateur video, indicating that UN security guard Louis Maxwell, of Miami, was killed after he escaped from the guest house – not from a terrorist bullet or explosives as the Afghan government had claimed.

Stern reported that the video shows Maxwell pulling himself up from all fours on a Humvee, and standing among Afghan police. A single shot strikes Maxwell, who falls to the ground dead, it said. Three more shots come seconds later, and then the police officer next to Maxwell’s corpse takes his weapon from the ground and runs away with it, it said.

Ban said at the time that two Afghan security guards outside the house where 34 UN staffers lived appear to have been killed immediately in the assault, which apparently targeted the UN for its role in the Nov. 7 presidential runoff election. The Taliban, which claimed responsibility for the attack, viewed the balloting as a Western plot.

The two security officers – Maxwell and Laurance Mefful of Ghana – both died in the attack.

See also:

• Casualties – civilian, Australia in Afghanistan
• Taliban and Al Qaeda, Australia in Afghanistan