In 2006, three decades after the partition of Cyprus in 1974, and the subsequent concentration from its dispersed locations across the island to the buffer zone in 1975, the role and responsibilities of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (Unficyp) continued largely unchanged. Interposed between two former warring factions – the Turkish military in the north and the Cypriot National Guard in the south – continuous rotations of Unficyp soldiers have monitored the ceasefire lines, and successive contingents of United Nations civilian police (Uncivpol) have patrolled the buffer zone. Together they have performed humanitarian roles and overseen the security of the minority Greek Cypriot population in the north and Turkish Cypriot population in the south.

Life was rather quiet for the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (Unficyp) in early 1974. The high levels of intercommunal violence that defined its establishment a decade earlier had largely receded to a relatively peaceful coexistence between Greek and Turkish Cypriots. Part of Unficyp’s civilian police component since 1964, the Australian civilian police – known as Austcivpol – with its headquarters in Limassol, smaller substations at Ktima and Polis, and men attached to Unficyp headquarters in Nicosia, had settled into a daily routine of village patrols and liaising with local police in the Limassol Zone, their south-western portion of the island.