Nine USAID relief workers killed in western Sudan
KHARTOUM, Sudan, Oct 26, 2003 (AP) — Nine Sudanese relief workers of an American aid agency have been killed during clashes between warring tribes in western Sudan, an agency official said Sunday.
Andrew Natsios, head of the United States Agency for International Development, told reporters at the American Embassy in Khartoum that the nine workers were transferring aid to displaced Sudanese in camps in the country’s western Darfur region when they were killed a week ago.
It was not clear when the nine Sudanese were killed or who killed them.
Natsios urged the Sudanese government to guarantee the safety of USAID workers and volunteers traveling to camps in Darfur, some 1020 kilometers (miles 640) west of Khartoum.
“We have over 600,000 internally displaced persons as a result of the recent fighting in Darfur,” Natsios said. “We are concerned about the situation there.”
Earlier Sunday, Sualif el-Deen Salih, the head of Sudan’s governmental Humanitarian Aid Agency, which supervises all nongovernment and international organizations, acknowledged for the first time the seriousness of the situation in Darfur.
Recent tribal clashes there killed more than 100 people and scattered thousands of people from 15 villages into the wilderness fearing for their lives, press reports said in Khartoum last week.
Darfur, on the border with Chad and Central Africa, is home to some 80 tribes and ethnic groups divided between nomads of Arab origin and farmers of African origin.
Nearly a fifth of Sudan’s 30 million people live in the region, one of the country’s least developed, where cycles of drought and desert creep have shrunk its vast grazing areas and spurred friction among nomads and farmers.
The situation worsened earlier this year when a Darfur group demanding self determination for the region attacked Sudanese government troops. Last month, the government and the Darfur Liberation Army agreed to a 45-day cease-fire.
Humanitarian agencies have expressed concern in the past about fighting and banditry in Darfur that has displaced large numbers of civilians.