Gunmen kill two peacekeepers in Darfur
Gunmen have killed two African Union peacekeepers and critically wounded a third in Darfur, the African Union said in a statement today.
The peacekeeping mission said it was “deeply concerned” by the fact that the gunmen are believed to belong to the Sudan Liberation Army, the rebel faction that signed the Darfur Peace Agreement last May.
That signatories to the accord would attack peacekeepers is a severe blow to international attempts to promote the peace process and persuade other warring factions to join it.
“This deplorable and condemnable act was perpetrated by gunmen believed to be elements belonging to Sudan Liberation Movement or Army (Minni Minnawi faction), which is in full control of Graida,” the statement said, referring to the leader of the SLA who signed the agreement and the Darfur town where the attack took place.
The statement said that gunmen abducted the two peacekeepers while they were “on administrative duty” on Monday and subsequently killed them. “A third soldier was critically injured,” the statement said, without giving details of how the attack was carried out.
“Preliminary accounts of the incident,” the statement added, “indicate that the perpetrators are known elements in Graida who could be easily identified.”
Earlier on Monday, about 30 gunmen of groups that have signed the May accord surrounded an office for the implementation of the peace agreement in El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, and “threatened the officer in charge”, the statement said.
The African Union is “deeply concerned that these, and other recent incidents of this nature, occurred in El Fasher and Graida, both of them strongholds of the (peace accord’s) signatories”, the statement said, adding that the signatories should stop their forces from attacking AU personnel.
In Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where the African Union has its headquarters, an official of the Darfur force said the slain peacekeepers were Nigerian soldiers.
“They were just shopping. They were unarmed and they were attacked by unidentified men,” said Mahmoud Kane, the head of the African Union’s Darfur Integrated Task Force.
The AU statement said the dead peacekeepers’ vehicle was stolen. It called on the Minnawi faction to investigate the kidnapping and killing and ensure that the vehicle is returned.
Monday’s deaths brought to 11 the number of AU military personnel who have been killed on duty since the force was deployed to Darfur in 2004. Another peacekeeper is listed as missing.
The African Union has 7,000 troops in its Darfur force. Aware that the mission is overwhelmed by the task of keeping the peace in a region the size of France, the UN Security Council recommended last year that it be replaced by a force of more than 20,000 UN peacekeepers.
However, the Sudanese government has rejected this, insisting that the AU required only technical assistance and equipment from the United Nations.
More than 200,000 people have died and more than 2.5 million people have been displaced in four years of fighting in Darfur.
The conflict began when members of the region’s ethnic African tribes took up arms, rebelling against what they saw as decades of neglect and discrimination by the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum.
The government launched a counter-insurgency in which a pro-government Arab militia committed widespread atrocities against the African community.
Several rebel factions refused to sign the May accord, leading to an escalation in fighting.
