Nigerian troops to leave for Darfur on Thursday

LAGOS, Oct 27 (Reuters) – Almost 400 Nigerian troops are due to leave for Sudan’s Darfur region on Thursday as a part of an African Union (AU) force to monitor renewed fighting in the area, an army spokesman said on Wednesday.

“All things being equal, they will leave tomorrow morning. A little more than two companies are on standby and ready to leave anytime the AU gives the go-ahead,” Colonel Mohammed Yusuf said.

The 390 soldiers, who are expected to travel aboard a U.S. transport plane from the capital Abuja, will join 150 Nigerian troops already in Darfur to make up a battalion, Yusuf said.

The AU has agreed to deploy more than 3,000 troops to Darfur to bolster 150 ceasefire monitors and 300 troops already in the arid area the size of France, where 1.5 million people have been uprooted from their homes since rebels took up arms against the Sudanese government last year.

Other troops are expected to be sent from Rwanda and other unspecified countries.

The force’s main job will be to monitor a ceasefire agreed in April which both sides accuse each other of breaking, but their mandate also includes protecting civilians under imminent threat.

The United Nations estimates that at least 70,000 people have died from malnutrition and disease in the last seven months alone, a figure which the Sudanese government disputes.

AU-sponsored talks between the rebels and the government have stalled in Abuja after rebels insisted that the government must disarm its militias in Darfur before they would sign a deal to bring aid to the refugees.