IRAQ/UN: The United Nations has promised to stay in Iraq despite Tuesday's truck-bomb attack at its Baghdad headquarters which killed at least 20 people, while Britain and other European states even pressed for a stronger UN mandate.
As rescuers hunted survivors and hauled bodies from the ruins of the UN building after the suspected suicide bombing, some staff were flown to Jordan as an evacuation began of the many wounded or traumatised by the blast.
A UN source said a decision had been made to pull out temporarily up to 250 international staff on security grounds after the most devastating attack on a UN civilian complex in the world body's 58-year history.
No group has claimed responsibility, but Mr Paul Bremer, Iraq's American governor and an anti-terrorism expert, said the main suspects were groups linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network and supporters of Saddam Hussein.
The United Nations Secretary-General, Mr Kofi Annan, said UN work in Iraq would go on even though the top UN envoy to Iraq, Mr Sergio Vieira de Mello, was among those killed. At least 100 people were wounded.
"We will persevere, we have work to do," he said in Stockholm. "We will not be intimidated."
France and Germany, both leading opponents of the war in Iraq, also repeated calls for an expanded UN presence, something the United States has firmly resisted.
"The tragic events that just occurred in Iraq only reinforce our conviction over the role of the United Nations in restoring peace and stability in Iraq," a French Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said.
"We have always stressed that we would like as central a role as possible for the United Nations," said a German Foreign Ministry spokesman.
More than 24 hours after the blast, rescue workers found another body yesterday evening. More corpses and possible survivors were still in the collapsed building, officials said.
Aircraft with wounded UN staff and others wishing to leave landed in Jordan. Officials said there was no full-scale pull-out.
"There are 20 dead and there are many believed still trapped in there," said Mr Ahmad Chalabi, one of the 25 members of Iraq's US-appointed Governing Council.
Mr Chalabi told a news conference that the Governing Council had received intelligence on August 14th that Saddam loyalists and Muslim fundamentalists had held a meeting to discuss a truck bomb attack either on an Iraqi political party or on the United Nations. He said the warning was passed on to US forces.
President Bush vowed to hunt the bombers and said "terrorists and the remnants of the brutal regime" would not stop him turning Iraq into a peaceful democracy.
Reporting a series of fresh attacks, the US military said on Wednesday a US soldier was killed and another wounded when their convoy came under fire south of Baghdad. In Saddam's home town of Tikrit, guerrillas also attacked a US convoy yesterday, killing a US contractor and wounding two soldiers.
In a separate ambush, four soldiers were wounded when a bomb was detonated near their convoy near Tikrit.