Darfur rebels kidnap govt workers, says Sudan

KHARTOUM, Sept 8 (Reuters) – Rebels from Sudan’s remote Darfur region kidnapped three people, including a senior government official working to stop abductions, Sudan’s official news agency SUNA said on Wednesday.

The head of the government Committee for the Eradication of Abduction of Women and Children (CEWAC), Ahmed al-Mufti, told Reuters on Wednesday the assistant chairman of CEWAC, his driver and another worker had been kidnapped the day before heading south from South Darfur state, but he had no information on who had taken them.

He said Sayed Sineen Madibo was a Darfur Arab tribal leader and a senior CEWAC official.

“They were returning from a field mission and they were intercepted by some people and they were kidnapped with their car,” he said.

SUNA said rebels had taken them.

Darfur rebels have previously kidnapped other aid workers and government employees in remote Darfur, where a rebellion launched last year has sparked what the United Nations call one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

All the workers were eventually released.

The rebels accuse Khartoum of arming Arab militias, known as Janjaweed, to loot and burn African farming villages, which Khartoum denies.

The U.N. estimates the conflict has displaced more than 1 million people and up to 50,000 may have died as a direct or indirect result of the conflict.