UN Reveals New Violence in Volatile Sudan as Darfur Camp Refugees Attacked

A camp for displaced black villagers in Darfur was attacked yesterday by Arab men, killing 29 people, in what the United Nations has said is the first assault on a refugee camp in what has been nearly three years of conflict in western Sudan.
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The reports have been released in the midst of waves of renewed violence in the Darfur region of Sudan, as well as the southern region of Sudan. The violence has threatened the stability of the coalition cabinet that was formed on just Sept. 20.

The violence has become a great hindrance of the delivery of food and other humanitarian aid to more than 2 millions displaced people in Darfur and Chad, reported the UN.

Jan Egeland, the UN’s emergency relief co-ordinator told reporters in Geneva, “As we speak, we have had to suspend action in many areas, tens of thousands of people will not get any assistance today because it is too dangerous, and it could grow.”

Some statistics have indicated that as many as 300,000 people have died in Darfur due to the violence since February 2003. The huge crisis began when the Sudanese government arranged for Arabic tribal militias and nomadic herders to form the Janjaweed, a group to respond to rebel attacks by attacking farming settlements.

In the latest series of attacks, the UN refugee agency has stated that as many as 300 Arab men attacked the Aro Sharow camp in northwest Darfur. Up to 80 makeshift shelters were burned down and thousands of villagers were driven out into the open countryside.

|TOP|A spokeswoman for the UN refugee agency, Helena Caux said that this was the first time that the Arab Militia had attacked a refugee camp in Darfur. In addition, the camp where the attacks had taken place had already been declared as a no-go area for UN aid workers, the refugee agency revealed.

Jan Pronk, the representative of the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan in Sudan, reported to the Security Council on Sept. 21 that deployment of UN peacekeepers to southern Sudan and African Union troops to Darfur had to be sped up drastically to ensure violence would not once again spill over.

The African Union has so far sent approximately 3,000 of its 7,000 promised troops in the Darfur region to offer protection to the villagers there.

The United Nations sent 2,500 of the 10,000 promised troops in March to regulate and mediate in a January cease-fire agreement between the Muslim-dominated north of Sudan, and the Christian south – a civil war that has claimed the lives of an estimated 1.5 million people.

Pronk also reported to the Security Council that a Ugandan rebel group with forces in southern Sudan called the Lord's Resistance Army, had begun to attack the government troops there.