Death toll from attack on Darfur camp rises to 34
Sept 30, 2005 (GENEVA ) — The death toll from an attack on a camp for displaced people in Sudan’s embattled Darfur region has risen by five to 34, the U.N. refugee agency said Friday.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said it sent a team to the Aro Sharow camp that had discovered more details about Wednesday’s attack by a large group of armed men riding horses and camels.
The UNHCR team reported that many of camp’s 4,000-5,000 residents “had returned from the nearby Jebel Moon mountains and surrounding countryside, where they initially fled as the horsemen swooped into the camp, killing residents and burning down their makeshift shelters,” the agency said in a statement.
The survivors said the attackers included up to 300 Arab men, who were divided into three groups, according to the agency.
One group stole the camp’s cattle; a second chased and killed the camp’s residents; while a third set fire to the shelters, the agency said, citing survivor testimony.
The 34 people killed in the attack were men. Half had been living at the camp and half in nearby villages, UNHCR said. One of the victims appeared to have had his arms bound before being killed, and witnesses reported that he was tied up and dragged behind a horse until he was dead, the agency said.
In Khartoum, a senior official of the National Congress, the major partner in Sudan’s governing coalition, said no government troops were involved in the attack in West Darfur.
“The outlaws are trying to undermine our bilateral relations,” Hussein Barqu told The Associated Press. “This (attack) threatens the security of both Sudan and Chad.”
Barqu said the Sudanese government would consult the government of Chad, which borders West Darfur, about the suspected perpetrators of the attack.
The United Nation estimates that the Darfur conflict has left 180,000 people dead – many from hunger and disease – and has driven 2 million from their homes since it started in February 2003.
The attack Wednesday was the first armed assault on a camp for internally displaced people in Darfur, and “follows a series of worrisome security incidents throughout the region,” UNHCR said.
The U.N. humanitarian chief, Jan Egeland, warned earlier this week that escalating violence in Darfur was threatening aid for millions of people, as more international staff were coming under attack.
UNHCR said it was concerned that the deterioration in security was slowing aid supplies, and could prompt Darfur’s displaced people to flee again – possibly to neighboring Chad, which already has more than 200,000 Sudan refugees.
The Darfur crisis began when rebels took up arms against what they saw as years of state neglect and discrimination against Sudanese of African origin. The government is accused of responding with a counterinsurgency campaign in which the ethnic Arab militia, known as Janjaweed, committed widespread abuses against ethnic Africans.
(AP/ST)