UNITED NATIONS, Sept 22: The United States refused to allow male relatives of five Iraqis killed in the attack against U.N. offices in Baghdad last month attend a memorial service in New York, U.N. officials said on Monday.

The memorial, presided over by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, was held in the General Assembly hall on Friday, the only service honouring each of the dead individually.

The five families were allowed to send women and children and three of them did. But two families did not send any kin to the ceremony, said U.N. spokeswoman Hua Jiang.

“The list of adult males submitted for visas was refused,” Hua Jiang said. “Some of the families changed names but two families refused to make changes and were not represented.”

A US official would not confirm or deny the incident, but said that if the visas were not issued “there was a good reason not to do so”.

The Aug 19 bombing was the worst attack of its kind against the United Nations in its history. A total of 22 people were killed, 15 of them UN staff, including its head of mission, Brazilian Sergio Vieira de Mello, and his chief of staff, Egyptian Nadia Younes.

At Friday’s ceremony, two family members for each of the dead walked in a procession in the darkened assembly hall, lighting candles under the tattered blue UN flag taken from the Baghdad compound.

The victims and their families came from Iran, Egypt, Britain, Jordan, Spain, Philippines, Brazil, Canada and US.—Reuters