Rwanda begins dispatching soldiers to Sudan’s Darfur

KIGALI, July 17 (AFP) — Rwanda on Sunday deployed the first 95 soldiers of nearly 2,000 assigned to Sudan’s troubled Darfur region as part of an African Union (AU) reinforcement mission, military officials said.

Rwandan troops sing and dance in Camp Kanombe, in Kigali, prior to flying to Sudan’s western region of Darfur in 2004. (AFP).

Army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Charles Karamba said the country would send a total of three batallions to Darfur, which has been wracked by two years of war that has claimed between 180,000 and 300,000 lives and displaced 2.4 million people.

“Ninety-five soldiers are leaving today (Sunday),” Karamba told AFP. “In total, three batallions of 1,756 Rwandan soldiers will be sent.”

Karamba said the deployment would be completed before August 9.

The tiny central African nation currently has some 392 troops in Darfur who are providing security to the AU mission there.

The troop deployment to Darfur, Rwanda’s first-ever peace mission, will be supported by some 150 US soldiers and military officials, said Ergibe Boyd, US spokesman for the Rwanda mission.

In April, the AU agreed to increase the size of its Darfur mission from the 3,320 to be deployed by the end of May to 7,731 by the end of September and appealed to the AU’s 53 members to support the operation with troops and cash.