Most of 134 United Nations Staffers Left Behind in Baghdad Evacuated to Jordan

For the second night, 134 U.N. staffers left behind when weapons inspectors pulled out of Baghdad earlier this week took shelter Thursday in a converted hotel on the outskirts of the Iraqi capital as missiles shook nearby streets.

The workers retreated to the hotel’s basement, leaving only one person to answer the telephone on a floor above.

“What can I say? There was very strong bombing,” the staff member told The Times during a pause in the action. “It is very close to the building.”

Late Thursday night in New York, a decision was made to evacuate most of the staff members. Just after dawn today in Baghdad, a small convoy of buses pulled up in front of the hotel. A staff member in Baghdad said about 105 people boarded the buses for the long trip across the desert to Jordan.

“Most of the staff is going to Amman,” he said in a phone interview.

The staffer said the bombing had caused no injuries at the hotel, although people slept fitfully on the concrete floor.

“There were some pale faces,” he said. “But the morale is high. I got three naps--two hours’ sleep.”

At U.N. headquarters in Manhattan, concern was clear for the staffers who remain hunkered down at the Canal Hotel, which has been converted into the headquarters of U.N. operations in Baghdad.

A U.N. spokesman said that when the bombing started Wednesday, the staff members moved into the corridor on the ground floor of the building because the area was thought to be safer.

“For the first few hours, the explosions were in other parts of town, but about 3 o’clock there were three very loud explosions apparently close to the U.N. building,” the spokesman said Thursday.

“After a cold and obviously restless night,” he said, “staff woke this morning to find that their local colleagues, including the people who run the cafeteria in the building, had come to work despite their own problems.”

The spokesman said relations remained warm with the Iraqi workers who assist the U.N. staffers. He said officials thanked the workers for their “support and extraordinary resilience in these difficult circumstances.”

Before the bombings started Wednesday, U.N. arms inspectors left by plane for Bahrain. Others departed by road to Amman, Jordan. All arrived safely.

After submitting a report Tuesday night that Iraq had not shown compliance with arms monitors, chief U.N. weapons inspector Richard Butler quickly ordered his team out of Iraq after receiving warnings from the United States and Britain.

Buses were assembled Wednesday to transport many of the remaining U.N. humanitarian aid workers in Baghdad to safety.

But a U.N. spokesman said the decision was made at the time that, rather than risk a long journey across the desert to Jordan with the possibility of an airstrike looming, the staffers would be safer in the hotel, which also serves as the weapons inspectors’ headquarters.

“It was too late for them to take a trip into the night, and it would be safer for them in the hotel,” the spokesman said.

Outside the Security Council earlier Thursday, Benon Sevan, executive director of the Office of the Iraq Program and the U.N. security coordinator, was asked if he was prepared to evacuate his staff now that attacks are underway.

“Well, we always have contingency plans in terms of redeployment,” Sevan said.

Asked why the staffers were not evacuated along with the inspectors, Sevan said: “We are there for humanitarian reasons. We are doing our work irrespective of the situation.”

But Thursday night, a U.N. source expressed a different viewpoint.

“There is a lively discussion going on in this building [about] what to do with the staff,” he said as new bombs fell on Baghdad.

The discussion ended with the buses in front of the hotel this morning.