UN Baghdad hotel bombing survivors: Darko Mocibob
Introduction:
It has been 15 years since the terrorist attack on the UN compound at the Canal Hotel in Baghdad: “the darkest day in our lives at the United Nations”, in the words of the Secretary-General at the time, Kofi Annan.
The truck bomb killed 22 international and local staff, including the top UN representative in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello.
Current and former staff who survived the blast on 19 August 2003 have been reflecting on the tragedy, which marked the first time the UN was deliberately targeted on a massive scale.
The bomb upended the office where Darko Mocibob was working, leaving him with cuts on his head and shoulders which were stitched up without the benefit of anaesthesia.
Having lived through the war in his native Bosnia, the senior UN official drew from that experience to cope in the aftermath of losing so many treasured colleagues, many of whom had become friends.
But for years he held on to the lacerated jacket he was wearing that day.
It has been 15 years since the terrorist attack on the UN compound at the Canal Hotel in Baghdad: “the darkest day in our lives at the United Nations”, in the words of the Secretary-General at the time, Kofi Annan.
The truck bomb killed 22 international and local staff, including the top UN representative in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello.
Current and former staff who survived the blast on 19 August 2003 have been reflecting on the tragedy, which marked the first time the UN was deliberately targeted on a massive scale.
The bomb upended the office where Darko Mocibob was working, leaving him with cuts on his head and shoulders which were stitched up without the benefit of anaesthesia.
Having lived through the war in his native Bosnia, the senior UN official drew from that experience to cope in the aftermath of losing so many treasured colleagues, many of whom had become friends.
But for years he held on to the lacerated jacket he was wearing that day.