UN-AU interpreter slain en route to Darfur camp

December 30, 2008 (NYALA) — An employee of the UN – African Union hybrid peacekeeping operation died in a hail of gunfire in South Darfur on Monday along a road dotted with government checkpoints.

The man was travelling in a commercial bus when unknown gunmen halted it at Majok village, which is only 5 km from Nyala, the capital of South Darfur, and 7 km from Kalma camp, the sprawling refuge of more than 90,000 people who have fled from Darfur’s six years of bloodshed.

The mystery attackers opened fire on the bus, killing or injuring several people.

The slain man was a Sudanese national serving as a language assistant in Kalma with the UNAMID peacekeepers, one of whom died of a gunshot wound on Monday after an ambush in the capital of North Darfur, El Fasher.

The attack also follows an assault on aid workers in the same locale earlier this month in which a convoy of six aid workers was halted after passing two government checkpoints. The workers were severely beaten despite complying with the attackers’ demands for money.

Most of the residents of Kalma are from the Fur tribe, one of the ethnic groups well represented among Darfur’s rebels, and thus allegedly targeted for extermination by the Government of Sudan, in the view of the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, who charged the Sudanese president with genocide and nine other crimes.

Government forces massed around the camp in August and launched an attack on the residents, killing 33 people and wounding almost twice that number.

According to a peacekeeping spokesperson, reports of the incident arrived from UNAMID’s Community Policing Centre (CPC) at Kalma camp.

Responding to the attack in El Fasher, the chairman of the Commission of the African Union, Jean Ping, condemned the attack as a “cowardly and deliberate act.”

His statement said the attack came at a time when renewed efforts are underway to speed up the full deployment of UNAMID.

(ST)