Fresh fighting has subsided in most areas of Sudan’s Darfur: UN

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 29, 2004 (Xinhua) — After a week of considerable insecurity, fighting has subsided in most locations in western Sudan where 300,000 displaced people have been cut off from all aid by the latest violence, a UN spokesman reported on Monday.

SLA rebels adorned with protective leather charms gather near a base in the desert east of El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state November 8, 2004. (Reuters).

An exception, however, was an area northwest of Tawila where armed tribesman attacked villages over the weekend, Fred Eckhard told reporters, citing reports of the UN mission in Africa’s largest country.

Due to the reported presence of unexploded ordnance in and around the town of Tawila, epicenter of last week’s unrest, the UNMine Action Service is conducting an assessment there on Monday before reopening access for humanitarian operations.

Humanitarian agencies are concerned about the further displacement of people during last week’s turmoil and have fieldedan assessment mission to the affected areas.

The rebel Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) seized Tawila in North Darfur a week ago in what UN special representative for Sudan Jan Pronk called a clear violation of ceasefire and security accords with the government.

He urged the Sudanese government to exercise maximum restraint and refrain from air raids in countering the rebel attacks and called on all sides to immediately halt hostilities in what the UNhas termed the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Nearly 1.7 million people have been displaced and Janjaweed militias stand accused of killing and raping thousands of villagers in Darfur, an area the size of France, after the rebels took up arms last year to demand a greater share of economic resources.

Up to 70,000 people made homeless by the conflict have died as a direct result of their squalid and precarious living conditions since March, according to the UN World Health Organization (WHO).