Pinoy UN staffer’s body arrives in Jordan

AMMAN (AFP) — The bodies of three more UN employees killed in the bombing of their Baghdad headquarters last week were flown to Jordan Wednesday, hours after the funeral here of one of the Jordanian victims of the attack.

UN officials identified the three as Ranillo Buenaventura of the Philippines, British-Canadian Gillian Clark and Iranian Reza Hussein.

A brief ceremony was held at Amman’s Marka Airport as the coffins were unloaded draped in the UN flag.

Earlier Wednesday Jordanian UN employee Riham Farra was buried in Amman at a funeral attended by several officials and journalists who came to pay tribute to the 29-year-old who worked for an Amman daily before joining the UN’s information office in New York.

The United Nations plans to hold a joint memorial service here Thursday for the 23 victims of the attack.

Mark Malloch Brown, administrator of the UN Development Program (UNDP), who has been sent here by Secretary General Kofi Annan to oversee the repatriation of the victims, will attend the ceremony, a UN statement said.

On Wednesday Malloch Brown had talks with King Abdullah II about the situation in Iraq and thanked him for making Jordanian hospitals and air force planes available to evacuate UN staff out of Iraq over the past week.