Two aid workers killed in attack on Darfur aid convoy

KHARTOUM, Dec 13 (Reuters) – Two employees of a British charity were killed in Sudan’s troubled Darfur region on Sunday when their convoy came under fire, the aid agency said on Monday.

A Sudan Liberation Army rebel patrolling the desert west of El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur. (Reuters).

Both were Sudanese nationals working in the remote western region, where Save the Children UK is one of the largest food distributors, reaching over 300,000 of the more than 1.6 million people forced from their homes by a 22-month-old rebellion.

“Two Save the Children staff were brutally killed yesterday in South Darfur,” David Throp, a Save the Children official told Reuters.

He said the organisation had suspended operations in South Darfur state while investigations were taking place.

Two other Save the Children workers were killed in October when their vehicle hit a landmine which African Union officials, monitoring a shaky ceasefire, later blamed on rebel forces.

There are over 800 international aid workers and more than 5,000 local staff working in Darfur, which the United Nations says is suffering one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

Throp said the aid workers were travelling in a convoy of clearly marked humanitarian vehicles. The other staff in the convoy were evacuated safely by African Union forces.

“We deplore this brutal killing of humanitarian workers in Darfur. Our deepest sympathies are with the families and friends of our Sudanese colleagues,” Ken Caldwell, the organisation’s director of international operations, said in London.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said last week Darfur was plagued by banditry, rape and village burnings, with 2.3 million people in desperate need of aid.

After years of tribal conflict over scarce resources in arid Darfur, rebels took up arms early last year accusing Khartoum of nelgect and of arming Arab militias, known as Janjaweed, to loot and burn non-Arab villages.

Khartoum says it mobilised some militias to fight the rebellion but denies any links to the Janjaweed, whom it calls outlaws.