U.N. restricts Afghanistan workers
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A UNHCR worker boards a car in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday.
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(CNN) -- A day after gunmen shot and killed one U.N. refugee agency staff member and wounded another in southern Afghanistan, the agency has announced it is halting staff road trips in the country and will review its program helping Afghan refugees.
The body of Bettina Goislard, a 29-year-old French national, was taken Sunday to Kabul from Ghazni, 100 km (62 miles) south of the capital.
The attack took place Sunday in downtown Ghazni, when two men on a motorcycle fired on a U.N. vehicle, killing Goislard and wounding her Afghan driver, the office of the U.N. High Commissioner on Refugees said in a written statement.
A third staff member was unharmed. The attackers have been arrested, the statement said.
Goislard is the first U.N. staffer in Afghanistan to be killed since the world body resumed operations there after the collapse of the Taliban regime.
UNHCR said that, since then, it has helped 2.5 million Afghan refugees from Iran and Pakistan and some 500,000 internally displaced Afghans return to their homes.
The agency suspended operations in Ghazni province Sunday, confined staff members to quarters and offices and initiated a review of operations in the country.
"Whatever measures we take, we will stand by the majority of Afghans who are working with us to build peace in Afghanistan," said Filippo Grandi, UNHCR's representative in Afghanistan.
"But we certainly cannot allow our staff to be left at the mercy of those who are targeting us."
High Commissioner Ruud Lubbers condemned the killing as "yet another dastardly assault on an innocent humanitarian worker."
And the U.N. Security Council condemned the "callous murder" and urged Afghan authorities to make every effort to bring the perpetrators to justice.
Goislard is the fifth UNHCR staff member to be killed in the line of duty since 2000, when three staff members were killed in Indonesia and another in Guinea.
We are deeply shocked and greatly angered by the senseless murder of Bettina, who was an exemplary young colleague always actively seeking ways to help people in need," Grandi said earlier.
"Her dedication to the Afghan people was truly extraordinary. Her death is a terrible loss to her family, to us and to Afghanistan."
