Aid groups halt work in western Darfur border area
April 23, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — Several international aid agencies said on Monday they were temporarily suspending their work in the town of Um Dukhun in Sudan’s troubled Darfur because of increased violence.
The agencies, which include the British group Oxfam, Save the Children Spain and the U.S.-based Mercy Corps, said the decision would disrupt services to some 100,000 people in the area near the border with Chad and Central African Republic.
They said attacks on their operations had increased in the past three weeks. In one incident, a humanitarian convoy was shot at and robbed while travelling outside the town in western Darfur, the groups said in a statement.
An aid agency security guard was badly beaten up in another attack and is in a critical condition.
“We greatly regret any suspension, even temporarily, of assistance to people in need,” Oxfam and Save the Children Spain said in a joint statement. “But such attacks on humanitarian workers are not acceptable and cannot be tolerated.”
The statement said a small number of aid workers would remain to monitor the situation and maintain essential services.
Aid agencies working in the town and in surrounding rural areas help displaced Darfuris as well as refugees fleeing the violence in Chad and Central African Republic.
The United Nations says about 200,000 people have been killed in Darfur since the conflict flared in 2003, when rebels took up arms against the Khartoum government, charging it with neglect. Sudan says only 9,000 people have perished.
VIOLENCE PERSISTS
Rights groups and opposition figures say violence has persisted despite a 2006 peace deal between the government and one rebel faction, threatening the world’s biggest humanitarian operation. Khartoum says security in the region is improving.
One rebel group said on Monday that government aircraft bombed the village of Amray in northern Darfur late on Sunday, killing at least two civilians. It said another village in the same area was bombed on Saturday, killing two women.
“Helicopters and Antonov aircraft bombed Amray and killed one woman and a child,” rebel commander Jar el-Neby said.
An army spokesman said he was not aware of the attacks. Presidential adviser Majzoub al-Khalifa said government forces had not engaged with the rebels over the past two months.
He called on the rebels to join the peace agreement.
“The door is open for those who did not sign to catch up … but they cannot stop the peace,” he told reporters at a ceremony marking the establishment of the Darfur Transitional Regional Authority, a body charged with reconstruction in the region.
The ceremony, held under a fierce sun in Khartoum, was attended by a host of foreign diplomats and the acting head of the African Union mission in Sudan.
“We hope that this can be a blessed start … We hope at the same time that peace will be comprehensive, without exempting anybody,” AU spokesman Noureddin Mezni said.
Eritrea, which has friendly relations with Sudan, says it is trying to bring the non-signatory rebels to the negotiating table with Khartoum. The rebels want to renegotiate the 2006 peace deal, a demand Sudan rejects.
(Reuters)