UN peacekeeper's body to be flown to Kerala

The body of Border Security Force Commandant Satish Menon, who was killed in Kosovo, the separatist Albanian-majority region of Serbia, in a sniper attack on Sunday night will be flown to his hometown Kochi in Kerala on Thursday, August 7, an external affairs ministry official said.

Menon, 43, was shot dead while on his way from Leposavic village to Mitrovica in Kosovo.

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Menon was a officer with wide experience who had been "posted at various places around the country", a BSF officer said. His ancestral home is in Vypin near Kochi. "His body will be flown directly to Kochi," the officer said.

Menon was a member of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). He is the first UN police officer to be killed in Kosovo after the UN mission was sent there in October 1999.

Indian Police Service officer Kiran Bedi, a civilian police adviser in the UN's department of peacekeeping operations, is currently in Kosovo.

In a statement issued in New York, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said those responsible for the brutal murder of Menon must be brought to justice. "The Secretary General is shocked and outraged at the killing of a UN police officer in an attack on a police vehicle in the northern part of Kosovo," the statement said.

It said the UN secretary general has sent his condolences both to the family and the Government of India. Annan's message mentioned that the Indian peacekeepers 'have given great service to the people of Kosovo'.

With inputs from Suman Guha Mozumder in New York