Arab Militia Attack on Darfur Refugee Camp Kills 29, UN Says Sept. 29 (Bloomberg) --

Arab men on horses and camels attacked a camp for displaced black villagers in Darfur yesterday, killing 29 people in what the United Nations said was the first assault on a refugee camp during the nearly three-year long conflict in western Sudan.

The incident came amid reports of renewed violence in Darfur and in oil-rich southern Sudan that threatens the stability of the coalition cabinet formed on Sept. 20. The violence also is hindering delivery of food and other humanitarian aid to more than 2 million displaced people in Darfur and neighboring Chad, the UN said.

``As we speak, we have had to suspend action in many areas, tens of thousands of people will not get any assistance today because it is too dangerous, and it could grow,'' Jan Egeland, the UN's emergency relief coordinator, told reporters in Geneva, according to a transcript of his remarks.

British lawmakers have said as many as 300,000 people have died in Darfur, a region as large as France, since February 2003. The crisis began when the Sudanese government, responding to rebel attacks, organized nomadic herders and some Arabic tribal militias into a counterinsurgency force known as the Janjaweed to attack farming settlements.

Shelters Burned

The UN refugee agency said as many as 300 Arab men attacked the Aro Sharow camp near the town of Saleah in northwest Darfur. The unidentified attackers burned down 80 makeshift shelters and drove thousands of villagers into the unprotected countryside, the UN said.

Helene Caux, spokeswoman for the UN refugee agency, said it was the first time an Arab militia has attacked a refugee camp in Darfur. The area around the Aro Sharow camp, where up to 5,000 villagers lived, had already been declared off-limits to UN aid workers, according to the refugee agency.

Jan Pronk, who represents Secretary-General Kofi Annan in Sudan, told the Security Council on Sept. 21 that deployment of UN peacekeepers to southern Sudan and African Union troops to Darfur must be accelerated. The AU has sent about 3,000 of 7,000 promised troops to Darfur to protect villagers.

The UN has deployed 2,500 of the 10,000 troops authorized in March to monitor a January cease-fire in the two-decade conflict between the Muslim-dominated government in the north and the Christian and animist south that has killed an estimated 1.5 million people. Pronk told the Security Council that the Lord's Resistance Army, a Ugandan rebel group with forces in southern Sudan, has begun attacking government troops there.

Sudan is sub-Saharan Africa's third-biggest oil producer after Nigeria and Angola, and expects to boost output to more than 500,000 barrels a day this year from about 340,000 barrels now. Under the peace agreement, the north and south will split oil revenue equally.



To contact the reporters on this story:
Bill Varner in United Nations at
wvarner@bloomberg.net or Karl Maier in Khartoum, Sudan at
kmaier2@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: September 29, 2005 11:20 EDT