Seven UN staff killed were all international workers for the world body and no Afghan UN workers were dead in the "coward" attack on a UN mission compound in northern Afghan city of Mazar i-Sharif, Alain Le Roy, the UN under-secretary general for peacekeeping operations, told reporters here Friday.
"The demonstrators rushed into our compound with weapons, and they stormed the compound," Le Roy said, adding they were firing and "killed several of our staff."
The seven killed, including three civilians and four armed guards, are all international, and no Afghan nationals were killed, he said.
Le Roy made the statement after he briefed the UN Security Council in an emergency meeting to discuss the deadly attack on the UN mission in
north Afghanistan.
"There are no missing persons among UN personnel," he said. " There were also some people killed among the demonstrators and the attackers."
"The security guards tried their best to prevent the attackers from going into the building but the number was too high," he said.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's special representative for Afghanistan, Staffan de Mistura, left Kabul to Mazari-i-Sharif to deal
with the situation personally, UN spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters here earlier Friday.
"We are not sure if the UN was a target, it happened that the UN was there," he said. "Mistura's impression was that the target of the
demonstrators wasn't the UN but an international target and the UN was the one here in Mazar-i-Sharif."
"It happened to be the UN because the UN was on the ground," he added.