MSF reports killing of aid worker in Darfur

NAIROBI, Dec 22 (Reuters) – An aid worker was killed in the south of Sudan’s Darfur region last week during an attack by government troops, Medecins sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders) said on Wednesday.

Dr Harris treats a sick baby in western Sudan (MSF).

MSF said another 29 out of 38 of its local staff in the town of Labado were unaccounted for following fighting there between Sudanese troops and Darfur rebels over the weekend.

The organisation said it had received information from aid workers on the ground that a Sudanese MSF worker was shot dead in front of an MSF warehouse in the town on Dec. 17.

He was the second Sudanese MSF worker to be killed in three months.

The news came after British charity Save The Children Fund announced on Tuesday it was pulling its 350 staff out of Sudan’s violent western region after four workers were killed in the past two months.

An MSF spokesman said the organisation had no plans yet to remove its workers from Darfur as a result of the killings.

“That is not something that is under discussion now,” spokesman Wyger Wentholt said in Nairobi.

MSF emergency co-ordinator Ton Koene said in a statement that it had not been able to independently verify the aid worker’s death because the situation was still too insecure to send an investigation team.

“Other national staff members that were present in the town are missing,” he added.

Quoting witnesses, MSF said Labado, formerly a town of 27,000 people, had been emptied and destroyed following several days of fighting.

The aid agency set up its operation in Labado in September, providing a feeding centre and clinic.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said Darfur is 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, Darfur rebels took up arms early last year, accusing Khartoum of neglect and of arming Arab Janjaweed militias to loot and raze non-Arab villages.

The government denies any links to the Janjaweed, which it calls outlaws.