Aid workers targeted as bandits snatch civilians in Darfur

Published on Saturday 29 August 2009 22:57

ARMED men seized two foreign civilians working for Darfur's peacekeeping force yesterday, the fourth kidnapping in the remote Sudanese region since March.

"They were abducted by armed men from their residence in Zalingei. The incident took place in the early hours of this morning," said UNAMID spokesman Noureddine Mezni.

It was the first time international staff from the joint United Nations/African Union force had been abducted, he said.

The kidnappers made contact with the peacekeepers soon after the abduction. "They told us of their willingness to talk to UNAMID," Mezni said, without giving details of their demands.

Sudan's State Minister for Humanitarian Affairs, Abdel Baqi al-Jailani, said the kidnap victims were a Nigerian man and a Tanzanian woman, and he branded the kidnappers 'bandits'.

"They have asked for a ransom. They never claimed to be some sort of rebels," Jailani said.

The kidnapping, in western Darfur, happened two days after the departing commander of UNAMID, Martin Luther Agwai, said Darfur suffered from banditry but was no longer in a state of war.

Aid workers say they have experienced increased hostility in the region since the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Sudan's president Omar Hassan al-Bashir on war crimes charges.

Khartoum ordered out 13 foreign groups and shut down three local ones after the ICC issued its warrant in March, accusing them of passing information to the court, which they deny.

Two women from Irish charity GOAL remain in captivity after being snatched in early July. Another aid worker is missing after a raid just over Darfur's border in neighbouring Chad this month.

Zalingei, around 60 miles from the Chadian border, is the birthplace of some of Darfur's best-known rebels, including Sudan Liberation Army founder Abdel Wahed Mohamed Ahmed al-Nur.

Al-Nur, who is now based in Paris, denied that any of his rebel fighters were responsible for the kidnap, and pointed the finger at government-allied militias. Jailani, in turn, denied the involvement of government-backed militia.

Al-Nur said: "This is not our behaviour. We are a responsible movement. We fight against terrorists and this kidnapping is a terrorist act.

"This is the continuation of the government's campaign to terrorise people on the ground. They want to complicate the mission of anyone helping the people of Darfur."

Al-Nur said the kidnap showed the weakness of UNAMID's mandate.

"UNAMID's first job is to protect civilians but they are not able to protect themselves because of the mandate. We need a mandate for peacemakers, not peacekeepers."

Meanwhile, tribesmen shot dead 38 people – including women, children and soldiers – in an inter-tribal attack in southern Sudan where violence is escalating from seasonal cattle-raiding into revenge killings.

Southern officials have blamed some of the worsening fighting on agitators from Khartoum's ruling party who, they say, are arming civilians in the south to cause unrest ahead of a 2011 southern referendum on independence.

Around dawn on Friday, armed members of the Lou Nuer tribe opened fire indiscriminately in a village in Jonglei state while attempting to steal cattle from its Dinka residents, the state's governor said yesterday.

"Thirty-eight people were killed and 64 wounded," Kuol Manyang said. He said the dead included women and children and seven southern soldiers based in the Wernyol settlement in Twic East county of Jonglei.

Internecine violence has killed more than 1,000 people in south Sudan this year, UN officials say. Death tolls from such incidents in recent years have usually been fewer than 20 people.