Officials commemorate 20th anniversary of deadly attack on UN headquarters in Iraq

By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA
Associated Press

BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraqi and United Nations officials have marked the 20th anniversary of a deadly attack on the UN headquarters in Baghdad. The Aug. 19, 2003, truck bomb attack on the Canal Hotel in Baghdad, which housed the U.N. headquarters in Iraq at the time, killed 22 U.N. staff including the head, Sergio Vieira de Mello, a rising U.N. star. At the commemoration ceremony held Saturday at the site of the attack, which has since been converted into a rehabilitation center for people struggling with addiction, the head of the U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI), Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, said that the “wounds created by the 2003 attack… may never fully heal.”