BAGHDAD — Chris Klein-Beekman was a jovial Canadian who planned to settle in Iraq. Sahir Khuhir Salim was a somber, love-struck Iraqi desperate to get out of the country.
Just before 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, Klein-Beekman, 32, program coordinator of UNICEF's Iraq operations, walked into the U.N. headquarters for an appointment. Salim, 31, was parked in front of the building, the former Canal Hotel, waiting to give a neighbor a lift.
A moment later, an explosives-laden truck blew a massive hole in the side of the building, killing Klein-Beekman, Salim and 18 others.
On Wednesday, their friends and neighbors struggled to make sense of the violent deaths.
"Chris was everybody's friend," said Geoffrey Keele, communications officer for UNICEF's Iraq office who had worked with Klein-Beekman for the last year. "He was the backbone of the organization."
In a Christian suburb south of downtown Baghdad, Salim's family lamented that he never achieved his dream of moving to the United States to marry the girl he loved. "He just wanted to get out of Iraq and start a new life," said Hiba Hani, his sister-in-law.
U.N. officials released a partial list of casualties, including Sergio Vieira de Mello of Brazil, special representative to Iraq; Richard Hooper of the U.S., Arab expert in the U.N. Department of Political Affairs; Ranillo Buenaventura of the Philippines and Martha Teas of the U.S., both of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs; and Jean-Selim Kanaan and Nadia Younes of Egypt, Fiona Watson of Britain and Marilyn Manuel of the Philippines, all members of Vieira de Mello's staff.
Among the non-U.N. victims were Gillian M. Clark, a Canadian, working for the Christian Children's Fund of America and Arthur C. Helton, director of peace and conflict studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Each had a story.
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Arthur Helton was in a meeting, probably with Vieira de Mello, when the bomb went off. An expert on forced displacement, the 54-year-old Helton was in Baghdad to help assess humanitarian issues.
A native of St. Louis, Helton graduated from Columbia College and from the New York University Law School. From the early 1980s, he directed the Refugee Project at the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights. In 1994, he founded and then directed the Forced Migration Project at the Open Society Institute. He joined the staff of the Council on Foreign Relations in 1999.
