Sudan finds body of French soldier
March 5, 2008 ( KHARTOUM) — Sudan confirmed Wednesday it had found the body of a French EU peacekeeper missing after deadly clashes with Sudanese troops just inside the border from Chad and were flying the corpse to Khartoum.
“His body should arrive in Khartoum this evening and we will cooperate to the maximum (with arrangements for its repatriation),” the spokesman added, referring all other queries to the French embassy.
The French commando vanished in war-torn Darfur on Monday when at least one vehicle from the European Union’s peacekeeping mission in Chad crossed into Sudan.
An exchange of fire followed in which a Sudanese soldier and a civilian were killed and a French soldier wounded, but details on the clash remain sketchy.
The EU mission announced that the Sudanese authorities had informed the local EU representative in Khartoum that remains discovered near the Chadian border are believed to be that of a French member of the peacekeeping force.
“The arrangements for the formal identification and recovery of the remains are currently being organised,” said EUFOR from its headquarters near Paris.
A European diplomat in Khartoum confirmed a body had been found and would be repatriated, but could not say whether it was the Frenchman or not, pending the next-of-kin being informed.
“Of course I confirm that we have received information (about the body) and that we are working in liaison with the Sudanese authorities to organise the body’s repatriation,” the diplomat said, asking not to be named.
Sudan ordered its armed forces to search for the missing soldier after warning EUFOR it had no mandate to cross the border into Sudanese territory.
EUFOR commander, Lieutenant General Patrick Nash of Ireland, had appealed for Sudanese assistance in the search for the missing soldier, while expressing regret for an “inadvertent crossing” of the border.
He said that EUFOR “carries out its mandate in full respect of the sovereignty of the Sudanese border”.
The deployment of the force remains unaffected, he stressed.
The 14-nation EUFOR mission of 3,700 troops began deploying to Chad and the Central African Republic last month after a delay caused by a rebel assault on the Chadian capital.
Of that total 2,000 will be French troops. So far some 700 have been deployed as the force builds up its strength.
Last month, Jean-Marie Guehenno, the head of UN peacekeeping operations, warned that violence between Sudan and Chad fought out by rebel groups on each side threatened to destabilise the region and could lead to a regional war.
EUFOR has a UN mandate to protect refugees from western Sudan’s strife-wracked Darfur region as well as people internally displaced by rebel insurgency in Chad and the northern Central African Republic.
(AFP)