Backgrounder: Chinese personnel fallen in UN peace missions

2010-01-21 13:54 BJT

The remains of eight Chinese police officers killed in last week's major earthquake in Haiti were flown back to Beijing Tuesday.

The victims were: Zhu Xiaoping, Li Qin, Guo Baoshan, Wang Shulin, Zhong Jianqin, He Zhihong, Li Xiaoming and Zhao Huayu.

Four of them were UN peacekeepers in Haiti, the other were sent by the Chinese authorities on a temporary mission.

China, since 1990, has sent 14,000 peacekeeping person times on 24 UN missions. Besides those who died in Haiti, eight others had sacrificed their lives.

Following is a list of the eight deceased Chinese peacekeepers on previous UN missions.

-- Lei Runmin, a UN military observer to Iraq and Kuwait, died in a car accident when performing his duty on the Iraq-Kuwait border in 1991;

-- Liu Mingfang, a UN military observer to Cambodia, contracted malaria and died there in May 1992;

-- Chen Zhiguo and Yu shili, two engineering soldiers, died in a bombing raid in Cambodia in May 1993;

-- Yu Jianxing, a weapon inspector, died in a traffic accident in Iraq in March 2003 during his second UN weapon inspection mission in the country;

-- Fu Qingli, an engineering soldier, died of illness in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in May 2005;

-- Zhang Ming, a peacekeeper in Liberia, died there in October 2005 after being shot by a stray bullet;

-- Du Zhaoyu, a UN military observer to Lebanon, died in July 2006 in a plane bombing.

Editor: Zhang Ning | Source: Xinhua