The African Union on Saturday reported a ”heavy” civilian toll after Sudanese forces and allied militia this week conducted raids in the war-ravaged western region of Darfur.
The AU Mission in Sudan (Amis) reported a ”heavy toll on the civilian population” after the army, backed by Janjaweed militia, carried out aerial bombardments in Birmaza in northern Darfur on Wednesday and Thursday.
”These attacks are a flagrant violation of the security provisions of the DPA [Darfur Peace Agreement],” said a statement from the AU, whose mission is to monitor Darfur’s often-violated peace deal.
The pan-African body renewed calls for the rival parties, who have failed to heed several previous appeals, to refrain from hostilities and bring an end to the devastating conflict.
Amis ”calls on all the parties to the conflict to exercise restraint, even in the face of provocation, and desist from carrying out condemnable indiscriminate attacks, which cause severe civilian casualties and the destruction of livelihoods”, the statement said.
The ill-equipped and under-funded AU mission in Darfur has failed to stem the conflict, which erupted in February 2003 when rebels from minority tribes took up arms against their Islamic rulers in Khartoum.
This prompted a heavy handed crackdown by the rulers and their proxy militia, sparking a conflict that has claimed at least 200 000 lives and displaced two million others, with hundreds of thousands camping in the insecure and sweltering camps in eastern Chad.
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan on Thursday announced that authorities had agreed on the deployment of a combined UN and AU peacekeeping force in the region, but this was later denied by Khartoum.
Annan’s announcement took many people by surprise because of Sudan’s vehement rejections of any UN role and its insistence that only the current AU force could operate in Darfur.
Diplomats and observers who attended the talks that led to the apparent compromise said Khartoum’s stance was not entirely clear, as Sudanese officials repeated that no UN peacekeepers would be allowed on the ground.
Aid officials have complained that the situation in Darfur, an arid region the size of France, has deteriorated in recent months and have warned that several people would succumb to the conflict or disease if the world fails to restore peace. — Sapa-AFP