Red Cross Weighs Withdrawal After Baghdad Attack [View All]

GENEVA (Reuters) - The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) expressed outrage at Monday's unprecedented suicide bombing of its Baghdad headquarters, which killed at least 10 people, and said it was weighing a withdrawal from Iraq.

It was the first time the Swiss-based relief agency, which for 140 years has sought to protect the victims of war, had been targeted by suicide bombers, although a number of officials have died in shootings and other attacks in places such as Chechnya (news - web sites) and Afghanistan in recent years.

"We are deeply shocked...because it is an attack against the ICRC ... and that means, of course, a deliberate attack against our protective emblem and against our work," chief spokeswoman Antonella Notari told Reuters Television.

The organization issued a statement condemning the bombing, in which two of its Iraqi guards were among the dead, and stressed that all deliberate attacks on civilians were violations of "international humanitarian law and negate the most basic principles of humanity."

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