ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The U.N. declared the Pakistani capital unsafe for the children of its international staff Thursday and ordered them out, putting the once- tranquil city on a par with Kabul and Somalia.
Pakistan is under intense U.S. pressure to combat militants responsible for rising attacks at home and in neighboring Afghanistan. Its faltering efforts so far have been met with a blur of suicide bombings that have killed nearly 1,200 people since July 2007, according to army statistics released this week.
The U.N., which employs more than 2,000 people in Pakistan, including about 100 foreigners, has not been hit. However, the truck bombing of Islamabad’s Marriott Hotel last month, which killed 54 people, including three Americans and the Czech ambassador, prompted the world body as well as foreign missions to review security.
Britain announced Wednesday it was repatriating its diplomats’ children, and other countries may follow suit. Pakistan has long been a nonfamily posting for U.S. diplomatic staff.
Under the new directive, U.N. expatriate staff will no longer be allowed to live with their children in Islamabad, the neighboring city of Rawalpindi or in Quetta, on the Afghan frontier. Much of the border region, including Peshawar, is already off-limits for U.N. families.
Until a spate of suicide attacks this year, Islamabad, a leafy city of spacious villas at the foot of the Himalayas, had long been considered a safe and comfortable home for its expatriate community. Its wide, tree-lined streets and pollution- free skies contrast with other teeming cities in Pakistan.
But in the face of the rising violence, extra checkpoints have sprung up across the capital and paramilitary troops glower over the top of machine guns at the entrance to the diplomatic quarter.
The precautions have made parts of the city resemble the Afghan capital, Kabul, which like trouble spots including parts of Somalia and southern Nigeria, are non-family postings for U.N. international staff. Baghdad and Khartoum are the only other capitals where the U.N. is on a higher security level, said Amena Kamaal, a U.N. spokeswoman in Islamabad.
