United Nations staff resumed work in Baghdad today in tents and shipping containers set up beside the wreckage of their bombed headquarters.
Dozens of UN workers who survived Tuesday's truck bomb attack which killed 24 people were joined by colleagues flown into Iraq in recent days to help re-establish the mission.
"We've come back to help restart operations to the best of our ability," said Kevin Kennedy of the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), who arrived from New York Friday. "It's hard to believe the level of destruction. It has to be seen to be believed."
Those returning to Baghdad embraced colleagues who survived the attack, some with dressings covering wounds on their faces and arms.
Different UN agencies were assigned spaces in rows of white tents, pre-fabricated offices and containers to set up computers and files retrieved from the devastated building.
"It's difficult because a lot of our records have been lost," said OCHA's David McLachlan-Karr. "We're trying to recover hard drives and fix laptops to see what we have."
Air-conditioners were hooked up in some tents and makeshift offices, others were left to the mercy of the blazing heat.
Expatriate staff were given the option to leave, but about half have stayed under the new leadership of Mr Ramiro Lopes da Silva, the UN humanitarian coordinator in Iraq, who has replaced Mr Vieira de Mello on an interim basis.