UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antnio Guterres on Wednesday led staff world-wide in mourning a UNHCR colleague, Aleksandar Vorkapic, who was killed on Tuesday night in the bombing of a hotel in Peshawar, Pakistan. "Aleksandar Vorkapic had volunteered for UNHCR's emergency roster and was deployed last month along with a team of other specialists to help the hundreds of thousands of civilians recently displaced in north-west Pakistan," Guterres said at UNHCR headquarters in Geneva, says a press release here on Wednesday.
"He was on his first emergency mission and he gave his life serving others. All of us at UNHCR are devastated by this tragedy and we convey our deepest condolences to his family in Belgrade." Vorkapic, a Serbian national, leaves behind a wife and three children.
He had worked as an information technology specialist in UNHCR's office in Belgrade since 2000. Vorkapic's colleagues in the UNHCR Belgrade office said on Wednesday morning that they were "devastated at his senseless loss." News reports on Wednesday morning reported 16 people died, including a UNICEF staff member, and more than 50 were injured in the bombing of PC hotel.
High Commissioner Guterres joined Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in condemning the attack, "which no cause can justify." "Humanitarian workers around the world are coming under increasing attack and it is the poor, the uprooted and the vulnerable who will suffer the most by their loss," Guterres said. "Aleksandar Vorkapic was the second UNHCR staff member to be killed in less than five months in Pakistan, where hundreds of thousands of people depend on UNHCR assistance.