Sudan says rebels kidnap 22 Darfur volunteers
By Nima Elbagir
KHARTOUM, Aug 31 (Reuters) – Rebels from Sudan’s western Darfur kidnapped 22 volunteers who had joined a programme to vaccinate an estimated two million people affected by fighting in the remote region, Sudanese officials said.
The head of Sudan’s vaccination programme and emergency operations office, Hassan Idriss, said rebels from the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) abducted the volunteers on Sunday.
“We have no information regarding where these volunteers have been taken,” he said in a statement released late on Monday, adding that they had been working in Adwa, in the Shiariya area of Southern Darfur state.
JEM officials were not immediately available to comment.
Sudan said on Monday rebels had kidnapped eight World Food Programme (WFP) and Sudanese Red crescent workers in Northern Darfur state. The WFP confirmed those workers were missing and set up a crisis centre to try to find them.
The United Nations’ top envoy in Sudan, Jan Pronk, is to address the Security Council on Sept. 2 on the Khartoum government’s compliance with a July 30 resolution to provide more security and aid access in Darfur.
After years of low-intensity conflict between Arab nomads and African farmers over scarce resources in arid Darfur, rebels revolted last year, accusing the Sudanese government of arming Arab militias known as Janjaweed to loot and burn African homes.
Khartoum admits arming some militias to combat the rebels but denies any link to the Janjaweed, calling them outlaws.
More than a million people have fled their homes, with some 200,000 refugees now in neighbouring Chad, triggering what the United Nations calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
International officials say the violence in the region is far from over.
Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, who is also currently chairman of the African Union, said on Monday that AU monitors had confirmed accusations by Darfur rebels that the Sudan government launched fresh attacks on civilians last week.
Obasanjo said he had written to Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir asking him to ensure all attacks on civilians by government forces and Janjaweed militia stopped, to avoid undermining peace talks being held in the Nigerian capital Abuja.