Pro-government Sudanese militia kill 16 in Darfur : SLM

CAIRO, Nov 27 (AFP) — Sudan’s pro-government Janjaweed militia killed 16 people in a western village in the troubled Darfur region, a spokesman of the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement told AFP by telephone.

Soldiers in a miltary unit calling themselves variously the Border Intelligence Division, Second Reconnaisance Brigade, or the Quick and the Horrible, also believed to form part of the Janjaweed militia, walk around the weekly animal market in Mistiria in North Darfur, Sudan, Tuesday, Oct. 5, 2004. (AP).

The 16 included “four women and two children,” said Mohammed Hamed Ali, accusing the Janjaweed of “terrorising the populace in order to chase them out of the region”.

“It is a flagrant violation of the ceasefire and we have asked African observers (charged with supervising the Darfur truce) to go there to declare this a violation themselves,” he added.

The bodies of the victims would not be buried until the observers arrived, he said.

African Union Commission chairman Alpha Oumar Konare urged warring parties in Darfur to refrain from ceasefire-violating hostilities, in a statement issued on Friday.

Clashes between the Sudanese army and rebels erupted in North Darfur’s town of Tawilla several days ago and have forced the World Food Programme to temporarily suspend its operations there.

The clashes violate the truce deal signed in Chad in April as well as a protocol to promote security signed in November, Friday’s statement said.

Since fighting flared in Darfur in February 2003, more than 70,000 people have been killed or have died from hunger and disease in the area, according to the United Nations, and another 1.5 million have been displaced.