AU calls on Sudan’s warring parties to end hostilities in Darfur

ADDIS ABABA, Dec 31 (AFP) — The African Union (AU) late Thursday called on warring parties in western Sudan to stop attacking humanitarian convoys delivering essential relief supplies to the region.

Sudanese displaced women with their children wait for medical attention at a World Doctors health center in Drage camp, on the outskirts of the town of Nyala in southern Darfur (AFP).

“These attacks and consequential retaliatory attacks by government forces both inflicted not only serious casualties to civilians, but also led the UN World Food Programme (WFP) to suspend further deliveries of much needed food aid to North Darfur,” AU Commission Chairman Alpha Oumar Konare’s special representative to Sudan, Baba Gana Kingibe said in a statement.

“This suspension by the WFP involving nearly one and a half million tons of food aid will seriously affect some 250,000 people who depend on it,” Kingibe said.

Kingibe was reacting to unconfirmed reports of a large-scale rebel attack on December 27 on the town of Ghubayash in Western Kordofan, which borders the troubled Darfur region.

Kingibe reiterated that all breaches of the April 2004 Ndjamena ceasefire agreement by the Sudanese warring parties were condemnable.

“It is particularly unacceptable that any hostile action should be mounted by any Sudanese Party, whether in Darfur or elsewhere, which would impede the smooth delivery of humanitarian assistance to the traumatized civilian population of Darfur.

“All Sudanese armed groups should rededicate themselves to the path of negotiated peaceful settlement of their conflicts, abide by agreements they have already signed and refrain from any further attacks on or affecting any humanitarian relief convoys delivering essential food, medicine and other supplies to civilians caught up in these conflicts,” Kingibe urged.

Rebels in Darfur, a vast western desert region the size of France, rose up against the Sudanese government in February 2003.

The government retaliated with the help of proxy militias which have been blamed for a scorched-earth campaign that Washington has called a genocide. Tens of thousands of people have been killed and more than 1.5 million left homeless.