KATHMANDU, Sept 25: Milan Kumar Karki, 26, a head constable of Armed Police Force (APF) serving with United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) was shot dead on Thursday.
No official correspondence about his death has been made by the UN to the government till Friday evening, but the news has already reached to his family that includes wife Radha, three daughters (aged 7, 5 and 3, respectively) and a newborn son.
A resident of Kuntadevi-7 in Okhaldhunga, Karki, according to his friends at APF, was said to have called on his ageing father Surendra a day before he was shot dead to wish him a happy Dashain festival.
APF officers, who are following information about the incident, said they came to know that Karki was shot dead while he was patrolling a suburb of the Liberian capital Monrovia. It is not yet clear who killed him and how he was killed. He had received two bullets in his stomach. "He received gunshots when he parted with his friends for nature´s call," an officer told Republica.
APF officials said they were informed about the incident through an e-mail from a Nepali staff at the UN Headquarters in New York.
Officials said there is an unconfirmed report of field commander attributing the death to ´possible suicide´. "We heard that he died on the way to hospital after he was injured with gunshots," they added.
UNMIL spokesperson referred to some ´incident´ that resulted in Karki´s death." There was an incident at Paynesville Red Light at about midnight," UNMIL deputy spokesperson Michael Saah said in Monrovia, according to AFP. "An UNMIL police officer died in the incident. UNMIL is currently investigating the incident."
UNMIL has not provided any details of the incident nor has it revealed the nationality of the victim as per the UN norms. The UN first informs the family of the victim before releasing details to the media.
"We heard gunshots last night. It is this morning when we got up that we saw the body. But the UNMIL soldiers ordered us not to go closer," Red Light resident Daniel Kollie told reporters.
Karki had moved to Liberia on the first week of August to join the Liberia´s Formed Police Unit (FPU), the newly formed police organization in the West African nation. He had joined the APF nine years ago as a constable after passing SLC. He was selected to serve the mission for six months while he was posted at Border Security Office, Saptari.
APF had sent its 12th batch of personnel to UNMIL in August with two contingents, each comprising 120 members, commandeered by SP Khadananda Chaudhary and Ram Prakash Shrestha. Together with FPU, Nepali policemen to take charge of riot control, jail security, cordon and search, road security and crime investigation.
The UN mission in Liberia, established after successive civil wars between 1989 and 2003, currently includes 10,000 peacekeepers. On September 17, UNMIL´s Danish chief, Ellen Margrethe Loj, announced that the force will be reduced to 8,000 by May 2010.
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