UN probe looks at Afghan forces for possibly killing UN employees by mistake

Role of Afghan forces eyed in 4 UN staff deaths

UNITED NATIONS — A United Nations investigation has found that four U.N. staff members killed during a suicide attack on a Kabul guest house last October may have died because of friendly fire from Afghan security forces, U.N. officials said Monday.

A final report by a four-member outside panel suggested that four of the five U.N. staffers who were killed in the attack had been shot to death because they were mistaken for Taliban insurgents during the Oct. 28 incident.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s office, which declined to make the report public, described a “confused situation at the Bakhtar guest house with the attackers and responding security personnel both dressed in Afghan police uniforms and a fire raging through the compound.”

It said one of the staff who died, Louis Maxwell of Miami, “may have been killed by Afghan security forces who may have mistaken him for an insurgent. … The report was not able to determine who fired the shots that killed the three other United Nations staff members though it leaves open the possibility that they also may have been killed by friendly fire.”

Previously, the U.N. had said that the investigation by the four-member board of outside experts, led by Australian police official Andrew Hughes, was looking at the possibility that one staffer, Maxwell, killed because of friendly fire.

U.N. peacekeeping field support chief Susana Malcorra said Monday that a fifth U.N. official burned to death when three suicide attackers stormed a Kabul guest house and set fire to the building. Three Afghan security officers and the three assailants also died during the Oct. 28 incident.

Malcorra also said the attackers were wearing the same Afghan police uniforms as the security staff at the guest house where 34 U.N. staff lived.

After the attack the U.N. sent about 600 of its 1,100 foreign staffers out of the country or into more secure quarters.